Broken Bars: Reimagining a Blueprint for Healthcare in and Beyond Carceral Settings

With Christine Mitchell, Carlos Martinez, David Fathi, and Shamsher Samra

In this final session of the series we seek to envision a transformative future for carceral healthcare systems that breaks away from outdated frameworks to be responsive, inclusive, and centered on the well-being of individuals. Drawing on decades of experience and data, our guests helped us reimagine a blueprint of solutions to systemic issues that have persisted and propose new directions to models that extend beyond traditional carceral systems to address both the immediate and long-term health needs of individuals. We explored how technology could be leveraged for continuity of care, and the role of community-based interventions and policy reforms that prioritize equitable health access. We also questioned how policy changes within and beyond healthcare systems can protect patients from criminal system contact – particularly individuals already living at the margins. Through this discussion we look forward to inspiring a call to action for stakeholders to collaboratively develop and implement visionary strategies to drive meaningful and creative change into a reimagination of the framework of carceral care.

Speakers

Christine Mitchell is the program director of the Health Instead of Punishment program at Human Impact Partners, a national public health nonprofit headquartered in Berkeley, CA. She is an organizer with the Boston-based DeeperThanWater Coalition and a co-author of the American Public Health Association policy statements on law enforcement violence and carceral systems. She has a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Doctor of Science in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Carlos Martinez is Assistant Professor of Latin American & Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz. He received his PhD from the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. His teaching emphasizes the political and health inequalities structuring our society and ways that communities enact change. His research lies at the intersection of medical anthropology, public health, and Latinx/Latin American studies. In its various manifestations, his research examines the health consequences and sociocultural implications of migrant policing, deportation, our fractured asylum system, environmental injustice, and the global War on Drugs. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming book, All This Safety Is Killing Us: Health Justice Beyond Prisons, Police, and Borders—Abolitionist Frameworks and Practices from Clinicians, Organizers, and Incarcerated Activists.

David Fathi is Director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, which brings challenges to conditions of confinement in prisons, jails, and other detention facilities, and works to end the policies that have given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world. He worked as a staff lawyer at the Project for more than ten years before becoming director in 2010, and has special expertise in challenging “supermax” prisons, where prisoners are held for months or years at a time in conditions of near-total isolation. From 2012 to 2015 he represented the ACLU in negotiations leading to adoption of the United Nations Revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the “Nelson Mandela Rules.”

Shamsher Samra, MD, MPhil is Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harbor UCLA and co-Chair of the Structural Racism and Health Equity Theme at UCLA School of Medicine. He is a member of Frontline Wellness Network -a grassroots organization of care workers committed to improving health and systems of care through decarceration. He is the former medical director of the Whole Person Care Reentry Program and currently supports Los Angeles County Department of Health Service in implementation of the 1115 Medicaid reentry waiver. He is the co-founder the Safe Harbor Violence Intervention Program and Trauma Recovery Center at Harbor UCLA Medical Center.

This event was recorded on December 11, 2024.

The Diagnosis of Incarceration speaker series is moderated and organized by Kennedy School MPA Candidate Dr. Cara Muñoz Buchanan, in collaboration with Katy Naples-Mitchell, Program Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, and Sandra Susan Smith, Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice; Faculty Director, Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management; Director, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy; Professor of Sociology; and Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute.

Links to resources mentioned during the discussion can be found on our website: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/w...