Albany, NY (WRGB) — Life inside correctional facilities has been under the spotlight in New York State for the last year.
The beating deaths of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi, coupled with a wildcat corrections officers strike, has many continuing to push for change.
While some reforms have been put in place, others say a difficult atmosphere remains, and at times, access to services and programs for incarcerated individuals has been limited by staffing shortages. Those shortages also putting a strain on staff, some needing to work overtime, or perform multiple duties while on the job.
To get an inside look at how it all works, CBS6 spoke with Gina Harrison, a Doctor of Nursing Practice and a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She works in the Pennsylvania correctional system.
“Incarcerated individuals, they face losing their freedom,” she said. “They no longer have access to the same supports that they had on the outside, like their family members, or maybe they would go to the gym or take a long drive as a coping skill they can’t access that they’re trapped in. Basically what is a bathroom with another human being for? And it could vary anywhere from 12 to 24, hours a day, depending on whether there’s a lockdown or not. So with people who are incarcerated, we see a lot of co-occurring disorders, a lot of chronic medical illness and a lot of chronic mental illness. So being able to support their mental health really helps get them back on track to get back out into the community, or even to be more prosperous members of the prison community,” she told CBS6.
She also spoke about resources inside youth detention facilities, especially when it comes to mental health.
“Oftentimes, adolescent detention grows into Adult Detention and incarceration, and just like in adult mental health care, adolescent and child mental health care is its own specialty, so that requires additional training beyond adult mental health and general mental health, and they’re really if we say that there’s a shortage in adult incarcerated mental health, there’s almost a desert in childhood mental health,” she said.
Watch the conversation here: