Massachusetts elected officials have proposed a controversial bill to allow prisoners to obtain a reduction of their prison sentence in exchange for organ or spinal cord donation.
The initiative arouses an outcry from ethicists and jurists, who wonder about the possibility for incarcerated people to make a free and informed choice on this subject in such a coercive environment.
“Prison is hell. Prisoners are subject to severe restrictions on their rights and are likely to do things to reduce their time behind bars that they would not otherwise consider,” warns Brendan Parent, ethics specialist transplants affiliated with New York University.
Austin Sarat, professor of law and political science at Amherst College, Massachusetts, serves a similar caveat.
“Prisons are not normal environments. The behavior of detainees is constantly monitored. The notion of consent in this context is much more complicated than for you and me,” notes the analyst.
The very idea of reducing the sentence could also contravene the federal law on organ donation, which prohibits any reward, including in a “non-financial” form, to avoid any risk of commercialization of the human.
In its current form, Bill HD.3822 provides that inmates who agree to participate in the program may receive a reduced sentence ranging from 60 to 365 days.
A specialized committee bringing together representatives of the prison environment, prisoners and health specialists would be responsible for determining the eligibility criteria as well as the reduction to be granted depending on the nature of the donation made.
The bill, which could be amended in response to criticism of the initiative, specifies that no commissions or payments will be made to correctional services.
“Restore bodily autonomy”
One of the instigators of the initiative, Judith Garcia, who did not respond to interview requests from The Pressexplained at the end of January in a tweet that there is currently no way for an inmate wishing to help a loved one awaiting a transplant.
The new law, she said, would “restore bodily autonomy to detainees” while helping to reduce the list of patients awaiting organ donation in the state.
The elected official specified that this contribution could be particularly crucial for sick people of African-American or Latin American origin, who wait on average significantly longer than white people to obtain a donation. All the more so, she says, in a context where these minority groups are particularly affected by the problems of over-incarceration.
Many Internet users have castigated the intervention of Mr.me Garcia, noting that the bill was “disgusting” and an unacceptable affront to “human dignity.”
Carlos Gonzalez, another elected official supporting the initiative, indicated that he had been inspired by the situation of a friend, father of three children, waiting for a kidney donation.
He told Boston.com that expanding the potential donor pool would increase the likelihood that minority people waiting for an organ will receive the critical care they need.
“Well-meaning”
Brendan Parent notes that the legislators seem “well-meaning”, but obviously did not carefully consider the ethical issues raised by their proposal.
Their bill, Mr. Parent believes, is all the more problematic because inmates generally do not receive quality health care and are unlikely to be adequately cared for in the event of an organ transplant, delicate surgery.
This is not the first time that an American state has juggled a scenario of this type since South Carolina had studied a similar bill in 2007, which was never approved.
Austin Sarat notes that a few US states allow inmates to signify their willingness to donate their organs after death.
This is particularly the case, he says, of Utah and Texas, which expressly prohibit any form of compensation for such a decision, including in the form of “preferential treatment” from prison authorities.
The vast majority of states, however, do not allow any organ donation from prisoners, notes Mr. Sarat, who is delighted to note that the elected officials of Massachusetts have recently mentioned their intention to review the bill to remove the ethically “dangerous” elements. that it contains.
The elimination of the possibility of sentence reductions, if it materializes, should not make us forget the problems posed by the poor quality of health care offered to prisoners, adds the analyst, who doubts the possibility that the draft law is ultimately passed.