Is flossing a civil right? Eleven New York prisoners say it is.
“We feel that the Westchester County Department of Corrections is depriving inmates of the use of dental floss, which is causing us cavities,” Santiago Gomez, told a reporter from the local newspaper, The Journal News/LoHud.com in a telephone interview.
“They recognize the importance of it, that you have to floss, in the regulation manual. They clearly state if you don’t floss you’re going to get cavities,” Gomez said. Gomez, 26, is the lead plaintiff in a federal civil rights lawsuit, filed in September in U.S District Court in Manhattan.
Just as out in the free world, without adequate care, dental problems only get worse.
“When you get these cavities, they give you a temporary filling which almost, by three or four weeks, falls out, which requires unnecessary procedures such as more drilling to replace this temporary filling,” Gomez said.
The inmates, who are seeking $500 million in the lawsuit, said their lack of floss is causing them severe pain.
“They also argue that the lack of access to floss is causing them to lose their teeth,” wrote reporter Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
Correctional institutions are constitutionally required to provide adequate health care services.
But how these services are defined can be a matter of debate and a source of interesting stories.
Prison officials, of course, stress they need to put safety first.
In the case of the New York prisoners, Capt. William McNamara of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and William Barbera, chief of patrol at the Rockland County Sheriff’s Department, told The Journal News/LoHud.com that their counties do not permit inmates free access to dental floss.
“They do, however, allow them to use it under a nurse’s supervision at the discretion of the attending dentist,” Fitz-Gibbon wrote.
“One strand is not deadly. Multiple strands could become deadly,” Barbera told the paper.
The National Commission on Correctional Health Care, an accreditation organization that sets standards on inmate care explained the problem with floss to the reporter.
“Inmates can use it to attack other prisoners, while some have used it in escape attempts by trying to saw through jail bars,” Fitz-Gibbon wrote.
Toothbrushes also are sometimes misused.
Earlier this year, Josh Stockinger, reporting for suburban Chicago’s Daily Herald, wrote of DuPage County deputies finding a pair of shanks carved out of toothbrushes hidden in the bunk of an inmate in the jail.
“They were sharp enough to cause injury,” Assistant State’s Attorney Shanti Kulkarni told the judge in that case.
As a result, some jails provide flexible or shorthandled brushes that have been expressly designed so they are more difficult to make into weapons.
Similarly, in the case of the dental floss, there might be safer alternatives. Gomez, who was being held on a gun charge, told The Journal News that other prisons where he had served offered dental floss.
“They have ‘loops’ which are inmate friendly. They have a rubber band appearance, they’re disposable, they come in zip lock bags,” the inmate explained.
Westchester Deputy Correction Commissioner Justin Pruyne told the newspaper that the jail was not required to provide dental floss to prisoners but that officials were nonetheless exploring the possibilities.
Mary Otto, AHCJ’s topic leader on oral health is writing blog posts, editing tip sheets and articles and gathering resources to help our members cover oral health care.
If you have questions or suggestions for future resources on the topic, please send them to mary@healthjournalism.org.
“At present we are looking into whether there are appropriate items out there in the community that could be used in a jail setting,” Pruyne said.
