Truthfully There is something uncomfortable about this topic...
Imagine someone is convicted of murder, armed robbery, kidnapping or another serious crime... That person is taken away from society and sent to prison... Meanwhile, ordinary citizens are outside working, paying taxes, struggling with hospital bills and sometimes even losing loved ones because they cannot afford proper treatment....
Then you hear that the same government is using public money to treat someone who committed a serious crime...
I understand why some people would be angry about it because the first thought that comes to mind is, “Why should my money be used to treat someone who has caused harm to society?”.. But when I think about it more deeply, I don't think the answer is just that simple..
Prison is supposed to be punishment for breaking the law, its purpose is to remove dangerous people from society, protect the public and ideally give offenders an opportunity to change.... But then I don't think imprisonment should mean that a person loses every basic human right...
If someone in prison develops malaria, a serious infection or even needs emergency surgery, should the authorities simply leave that person untreated because they committed a crime?.... I don't think so...
The punishment should be the loss of freedom according to the law, therefore We should be careful about creating additional punishments that were never part of the court's sentence...
And there is another side people sometimes forget...
Prisoners don't live on another planet, They interact with prison officers, medical workers, lawyers and visitors.... Some eventually return to society after serving their sentences... So If contagious diseases are allowed to spread inside prisons because we don't want to spend money treating inmates, the consequences may eventually affect people outside the prison walls too...
So healthcare in prison is not only about being kind to criminals.... Sometimes it is also about protecting the wider public..
However, I also understand the frustration of the ordinary citizen.... Imagine In a country like Nigeria, where many people struggle to access decent healthcare, it can feel unfair when the government appears to provide better medical attention to prisoners than to citizens who have never committed a crime....
A law-abiding citizen may spend hours in a public hospital looking for a doctor, buy expensive drugs with money they don't have, or simply avoid treatment because they cannot afford it...
Then that same citizen hears that prisoners are receiving medical treatment using public money... That can create resentment... but perhaps the real question we should be asking is not, “Why are prisoners receiving healthcare?”... Maybe we should ask, “Why is healthcare so difficult for everyone else to access?”..
Taking healthcare away from prisoners will not automatically make hospitals better for ordinary citizens... If anything, I think the government should be doing both...
Prisoners should receive basic and necessary healthcare because they are still human beings under the custody of the state.. At the same time, citizens who obey the law should not have to beg, borrow or sell property before they can receive basic medical treatment.
There should also be accountability.
Providing healthcare to prisoners does not mean giving them unlimited access to expensive treatment without proper procedures as I feel There should be budgets, medical assessments, monitoring and transparency so that prison healthcare does not become another avenue for corruption.... and perhaps we should distinguish between basic healthcare and unnecessary privileges.
If an inmate has a serious medical condition, treating that condition should not be considered a reward... But if public money is being wasted on luxurious or unnecessary medical arrangements, then citizens have every right to question it.
Personally, I believe prison should take away a person's freedom, not their humanity...
Some prisoners committed terrible crimes... Some victims will never recover from what happened to them. We should never forget the victims while discussing prisoners' rights... but justice becomes dangerous when we decide that someone who has broken the law is no longer worthy of basic human treatment...
Today it is a convicted criminal..
Tomorrow, it could be someone who was wrongly convicted and that possibility alone should make us careful about the kind of system we build..
So yes, I believe prisoners should have access to necessary healthcare but I also believe a country has failed when its ordinary citizens have to fight just as hard—or even harder—to receive the same basic care...
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