After the review of multiple public and scholarly resources relating to the improvement of mental health care provided to prisoners and detainees, it has been determined that prison and mental health administrators need to create a new policy that assists prisoners, detainees, their families, and the interprofessional team members that will be providing the mental health care to the prisoners. This policy should be focused on improving the level of access to high-quality mental health care that prisoners are entitled based on constitutional and international law. Internationally, the United Nations (2004) has created the Istanbul Protocol, which is specifically designed to keep countries accountable for their treatment of prisoners and detainees who need healthcare.

In American law, Conway (2009) writes that prisoners are protected under the Eighth Amendment, which states that prisoners are protected from cruel and unusual punishments. This includes denying them the proper physical and mental health care services that they need to prevent them from suffering “a lingering death (p. 2). To accompany the legislation already presently internationally and in the Eight Amendment, there was also a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined “an inmate must rely on prison authorities to treat his medical needs; if the authorities fail to do so, those needs will not be met” (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d., para. 2). Meaning that the improper provision of healthcare to prisoners, or the complete denial of it altogether, will make a prison fully liable for any serious injuries or deaths suffered by prisoners.

Along with the legal ramifications that come from not providing a high-level of mental health care for prisoners and detainees, this vulnerable population of patients’ needs to be advocated for because an unusual amount of them with mental health disorders are located within prisons (Benyon & Drew, n.d.). The new policy that gives prisoners and detainees a higher level of access to mental health care should utilize the resources and materials already available to the prison facilities and their current healthcare staffs. This is because the creation of a separate psychiatric hospital would be very costly and has not yet been proven to decisively create positive mental health interventions such as counseling, medication, and alternative therapies (play, art, etc.) for the prisoners and detainees in need of the hospital’s services. An example of the resources that would already be available to a prison’s corrections and medical staff are treatment rooms, transportation teams that are assigned to move patients to more equipped hospitals and medical facilities to watch over them, and visiting professionals such as psychologists, social workers, etc. who aim to intervene in more specialized ways for patients. These specialized ways could include family and education-based interventions, intensive theraputic counseling, and the creation of long-term treatment plans that can be executed by nurses, correctional staff members, and the patients themselves.

In addition to the lack of positive results, separate mental health hospitals may also increase prisoners’ and detainees’ risks of suffering mistreatment and other human rights violations (Beynon & Drew, n.d., para. 1). A policy that utilizes a facility’s currently available resources can be implemented by having an outside third-party organization train corrections and prison healthcare personnel on how to properly carry out a system based on preliminary screenings, referrals, and the provisions of proper treatments for prisoners. Studies have shown that a system that runs like this can have success and can also be done with little expense and new personnel or equipment (Pillai, Rouse, McKenna, Skipworth, Cavney, Tapsell, & Madell, 2016). These elements would be implemented by having correctional officers trained in health care recordkeeping and reporting procedures. These procedures would be designed to have correctional officers report prisoner’s health-based complaints to nurses for further preliminary evaluation. After the prison nurses perform further evaluations, they would determine if the prisoners need to be referred to a physician or psychiatrist for advanced care or will be properly treated with further monitoring and treatment by the nursing staff.

When determining the goals of the policy, the best interests of the prisoners, their families, and the healthcare professionals that are treating them should be taken into consideration. One of the most important goals that need to be created in the policy is the direction of people who are not currently incarcerated to the proper mental health care facilities. This is because mental health is still not being properly treated and diagnosed because of stigmas and negative cultural biases (Beynon & Drew, n.d.). If unincarcerated people who have mental disorders are treated with the proper interventions before any adverse events occur, they may have a better chance of avoiding the penal system altogether. This is due to the fact that any mental disorders that a crime could be blamed on would be getting their proper treatment and medication, which is not likely to happen in today’s current prison healthcare system While this does not assist prisoners currently incarcerated, it does provide a preventative measure to ensure that people who possess mental illnesses are not improperly inserted into the criminal justice system and subjected to subpar health care. To specify, these preventative measures would have people with mental health disorders properly diagnosed and treated before any crimes or other adverse events could occur, which would limit and prevent unnecessary exposures to law enforcement and prison-based health procedures.

To help people with mental health disorders who are already incarcerated, goals to improve the skill levels of prisons’ healthcare professionals should be created as well. Staff members who are better trained to treat prisoners and detainees with mental health disorders may experience a boost in morale and confidence since they have been prepared to deal with adverse situations (Beynon & Drew, n.d.). Along with extra training for healthcare staff, the rest of a prison’s correctional, administrative, and clerical staff should be trained on how to interact with prisoners who have mental health disorders. This is important because these workers may be able to help prevent suicides and other forms of self-harm committed by prisoners (Beynon & Drew, n.d.).

To conclude, the access to proper mental health care for prisoners and detainees needs to be improved. These improvements are required by international legislative measures like the Istanbul Protocol and domestic legislation like the Eighth Amendment of the United States constitution. These improvements do not require a large amount of new equipment or the hiring of new prison healthcare personnel, as a proven model has already been created by Pillai et al. (2016) that demonstrates how to use a facility’s current staff and resources to create a better system of healthcare referral and treatment for prisoners and detainees. Now having access to information like this, prisons should move forward by receiving training for their corrections and prison healthcare from outside and objective sources on how to properly communicate and implement a system similar to Pillai et al.’s.