Giving Compass' Take:
- Jaclyn Diaz sheds light on the harm done to the health of incarcerated people by medical delays in prisons, focusing on the story of a man in federal prison in Oregon.
- How can donors and funders support advocacy for timely, high-quality health care for people in prison?
- Learn more about key issues in criminal justice and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on criminal justice in your area.
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Luke Thornhill is scheduled to be released from an Oregon prison in four years. He's terrified he might die before then due to medical delays in prison.
He has family waiting for him in Idaho, "And I'm scared I'm never gonna see them again," Thornhill said during multiple calls with NPR from prison.
He's scared because he's been suffering from serious medical issues — including severe abdominal pains, bloody bowel movements and a swollen abdomen — since at least 2022, when he was incarcerated in a different facility. And he says he has not been able to get the treatment that he needs due to medical delays in prison.
"If you looked at my stomach, it bulges out on the right side, like the size of a grapefruit. And it just hurts all the time," Thornhill says.
Now, he feels worse than ever, he says. Constant pain makes it difficult even to sleep through the night.
"If I'm not careful with what I eat or drink or careful of how I move then I'm in worse pain and bleeding even worse."
Thornhill was sentenced to 80 months in federal prison on drug charges in March 2023.
In 2022, while incarcerated in Idaho, he underwent a colonoscopy, during which two polyps were removed.
After Idaho, Thornhill was moved to SeaTac, the federal prison in Seattle, and earlier this year was moved to the federal facility in Sheridan, Ore.
Since he left Idaho, Thornhill says, he hasn't reviewed the biopsy results with any doctors at either SeaTac or Sheridan — and nothing about his situation has changed.
The Human Cost of Medical Delays in Prison
"We're talking about something that I've been dealing with for a year now. I've been literally suffering for the last year. And I've been begging them to give me treatment for this," he says. "Nobody can tell me there isn't something wrong with me."
The federal Bureau of Prisons said in response to specific questions about Thornhill's complaints that "For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss any individuals' conditions of confinement, to include health status or medical treatment plans."
Read the full article about medical delays in prisons by Jaclyn Diaz at NPR.