Forgotten Prisoners Forced to Drink Dirty, Cancer-Causing Water

Get convicted of a crime and there's a good chance you'll not only lose your freedom, but your health as well, with officials at many prisons the world over unable or simply unwilling to provide inmates with access to safe, clean drinking water, turning what might be a few years behind bars into a death sentence.

So far, however, no one seems to be doing anything about it. In fact, the problem's "getting worse across the board," according to Robert Mardini of the International Committee of the Red Cross. And "not just in developing countries." Indeed, the Red Cross notes that "forgotten or neglected" prisons around the globe are now "breeding grounds for disease due to a lack of clean water, limited access to latrines, inadequate waste management, poor hygiene and overcrowded living quarters."

In California, officials at Kern Valley State Prison, a modern, purportedly state-of-the-art facility built in 2005, are forcing their 4,800 prisoners to drink water that they know is contaminated with levels of arsenic that far exceed safe levels, according to a report from The Boston Globe. Long-term arsenic exposure is known to cause many different types of cancer. Though scandalous, you almost can't blame those running the prison -- after all, who in a position of power is going to make a fuss about poisoning some criminals?

"It's not that major of an issue," prison warden Kelly Harrington told the paper. The prison's chief medical officer, Dr. Sherry Lopez, likewise doesn't seem to much care: arsenic is "much more a regulatory problem than a public health problem," she told the Globe.

Last year tests revealed water at the Kern Valley facility was also contaminated with ecoli. The scary thing? Other California prisons may be even worse.

"I just came from an institution where the water was just atrocious, definitely foul," one 25-year-old inmate serving a drug sentence told the paper. "This to me is like spring water here."

And it's just as bad on the East Coast. One prison in Easton, Pennsylvania, has been sued no less than 37 times over the last three years by prisoners charging that the conditions there -- "overcrowding, leaking roofs, dirty drinking water, cockroach infestations, sewage backup in the facility's kitchen and moldy bathrooms," according to allegations in one lawsuit summarized by The Express-Times -- caused them to come down with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

It's easy for some people to right stories like this off. After all, it's not happening to them, it's happening to a bunch of people who Did Wrong. But whatever law they may have broken, and many people behind bars are there for non-violent drug offenses, prisoners have already been punished, forced to live in a cage for years at a time. And the conditions inmates face in prison are bad enough, including the disgracefully rampant threat of rape -- the prospect of a much-shortened life due to dirty drinking water shouldn't be one of them.

Photo Credit: Still Burning