Sickle Cell and the Prison Industrial Complex
PDF | An unexplained death in custody represents an important focal point for public scrutiny of the criminal justice system, especially whe
This article was authored by Professor Simon Dyson (Sickle Cell and the Social Sciences) and Professor Gwyneth Boswell of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. It was published in The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice in 2006. Together, Dyson and Boswell highlight seventeen cases between US and UK prisons. Seven of these cases demonstrate that the care of incarcerated people with sickle cell anemia "falls well short of the minimum standards that might reasonably be required." Ten of them involved forced restraints of Warriors resulting in their deaths. To add insult to injury, the people who the criminal injustice system enlists to speak on its behalf oftentimes conflate sickle cell anemia with sickle cell trait, which is the genetic carrier state in which the person who has it is usually healthy. But, as you will read in the article, trait has been weaponized by the carceral state to reinforce preexisting racial discrimination in employment, insurance, and other spheres. And as was written in The New York Times last year, American police when they can will use trait as an alibi for why a Black person happened to die in their custody.
Attached below is a table listing the seventeen cases I mentioned above. Below that is The New York Times article.
Sickle cell trait has been cited in dozens of police custody deaths ruled accidental or natural, even though the condition is benign on its
