Palliative care & the injustice of mass incarceration

Due to the criminalization of marginalized people, many markers of social disadvantage are overrepresented among prisoners. With an aging population, end of life in prison thus becomes a social justice issue that nurses must contend with, engaging with the dual suffering of dying and of incarceration. However, prison palliative care is constrained by the punitive mandate of the institution and has been critiqued for normalizing death behind bars and appealing to discourses of individual redemption. This paper argues that prison palliative has much to learn from harm reduction. Critical reflections from harm reduction scholars and practitioners hold important insights for prison palliative care: decoupled from its historical efforts to reshape the social terrain inhabited by people who use drugs, harm reduction can become institutionalized and depoliticized. Efforts to address the harms of substandard palliative care must therefore be interwoven with the necessarily political work of addressing the injustice of incarceration.