Nursing in the American Justice System

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Abstract

Efforts to provide humane care for the mentally ill has led to growth of more suitable services in community-based settings, yet resources are insufficient to meet the needs of mentally ill who interface with the criminal justice system. The resulting collateral damage has created a pathway to prison for massive numbers of impaired individuals, and the inhumane warehousing of thousands of mentally ill people is reminiscent of a century ago. The criminal justice system was never intended to be a safety net for the public mental health system. While advances in expanding the role of the nurse in the healthcare system have shifted because of efforts by nursing's response to the 2010 Institute of Medicine report, the challenges for correctional/custody nursing have not been adequately articulated. This paper seeks to enhance awareness of Correctional Nursing through a discussion of challenges posed to nurses who work at the intersection of justice and public health in prisons, jails, detention centers and community supervision in this response to the Future of Nursing report.

Section snippets

Contemporary correctional nursing

Emerging from the work of Dix and others, are correctional nurses (CN) who choose to work in the intersection of justice, public and mental health care systems. There are limitations in what is known about the role of the CN, and contemporary knowledge is not well disseminated. The impact upon the ability of nurses to provide adequate care to incarcerated, detained, or supervised patients is influenced in part by a lack of funding to correctional healthcare. The Urban Institute (Schaenman et

Challenges to the future of correctional nursing

The recommendations in the Future of Nursing report focus on the critical intersection between the health needs of patients across the lifespan and the readiness of the nursing workforce to meet the health needs of targeted populations. The context in which nursing services are provided, the complexity of care, professional and public stigma, and workforce issues significantly influence the efforts by CNs to improve healthcare for justice-involved persons.

Impact upon CN practice

There has been little research completed related to correctional nursing job satisfaction and retention (Almost et al., 2013). There is even less research in development of evidence to support correctional nursing practice for competency in managing clinically complex patients, role performance within a secure environment and maintenance of job satisfaction and retention in the specialty (Schoenly, 2013; White and Larsson, 2012). As noted by Flanagan and Flanagan (2002) job stress and job

Call to action to transform correctional healthcare

In a review of the Future of Nursing report, Fineberg and Lavizzo-Mourey (2013) note that a blueprint for transforming the nursing profession focused upon removing barriers to practice and care, expanding opportunities for nurses to serve as leaders, and increasing the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degrees to 80% by 2020. Nursing within justice systems has hills to climb to achieve these recommendations.

Recommendations

This paper sought to highlight the current practice of correctional nursing in response to the Future of Nursing report (IOM, 2011). Considering advances being made across nursing, correctional nurses have some unique challenges (Knox, 2015). Yet, despite these challenges, correctional nurses enjoy highly autonomous practice opportunities. To promote the correctional nursing specialty the following recommendations are a direct call to CNs for action:

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      Efforts to enhance professional practice and increase the presence of academically prepared nurse leaders, along with the development of National Commission on Correctional Health standards, American Nurses Association Correctional Nursing Scope and Standards for Practice (2021), and other national nursing certifications through the American Nurses Credentialing Center have contributed to the evolution of this nursing specialty. APPs have existed for a few decades, but successful partnerships are limited in the literature (Kang-Yi, 2019), particularly regarding implementation and sustainability in carceral settings (Maruca & Shelton, 2015; Shelton et al., 2020). What should be emphasized is the time and persistence required by nursing faculty to initiate and sustain these clinical partnerships.

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