University of California, San Francisco, Division of Geriatrics, and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California 94121, USA.
Ann Intern Med. 2011 Jul 19;155(2):122-6. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-155-2-201107190-00348. Epub 2011 May 31.
Compassionate release is a program that allows some eligible, seriously ill prisoners to die outside of prison before sentence completion. It became a matter of federal statute in 1984 and has been adopted by most U.S. prison jurisdictions. Incarceration is justified on 4 principles: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. Compassionate release derives from the theory that changes in health status may affect these principles and thus alter justification for incarceration and sentence completion. The medical profession is intricately involved in this process because eligibility for consideration for compassionate release is generally based on medical evidence. Many policy experts are calling for broader use of compassionate release because of many factors, such as an aging prison population, overcrowding, the increasing deaths in custody, and the soaring medical costs of the criminal justice system. Even so, the medical eligibility criteria of many compassionate-release guidelines--which often assume a definitive prognosis--are clinically flawed, and procedural barriers may further limit their rational application. We propose changes to address these flaws.
compassionate release 是一项允许一些符合条件的重病囚犯在刑期结束前在监狱外死亡的计划。它于 1984 年成为联邦法规，并被大多数美国监狱司法管辖区采用。监禁有 4 个原则：报应、康复、威慑和剥夺能力。 compassionate release 源于这样一种理论，即健康状况的变化可能会影响这些原则，从而改变监禁和刑期完成的理由。医学界在这个过程中有着错综复杂的关系，因为考虑 compassionate release 的资格通常基于医学证据。由于许多因素，如老龄化的囚犯人口、过度拥挤、在押人员死亡人数增加以及刑事司法系统的医疗成本飙升，许多政策专家都呼吁更广泛地使用 compassionate release。即便如此，许多 compassionate-release 指南的医学资格标准——这些标准通常假设了明确的预后——在临床上存在缺陷，程序障碍可能进一步限制其合理应用。我们提出了一些改变来解决这些缺陷。
