Discharge Papers

An ER doctor who couldn’t save his COVID patients found another way to keep people alive — getting them out of prison.

Saving lives was kind of Mark Fenig’s thing. As an ER doctor in New York City, he loved his job and was good at it. Then COVID hit. And for the first time, he couldn’t figure out how to keep people alive. His patients were dying. His coworkers were too, some from the virus and one by suicide. The air was so thick with death that his colleagues were calling lawyers to set up wills. He was desperate to survive and desperate to save lives again.

Then he got an email. A public defender in Oregon needed expert medical testimony to help get medically vulnerable and aging clients out of prison, where people were dying from COVID-19 at twenty times the rate of free Oregonians. Mark jumped at the opportunity. When his expert testimony worked to bring people home, he took on more cases and eventually started recruiting colleagues to volunteer, too.

Mark quickly learned that this need pre-dated and would outlast COVID-19. Because when it comes to sentencing, America really is exceptional. Our sentences are significantly longer than those of comparable countries, and the U.S. is home to 40% of people serving life sentences and 83% of people serving life without the possibility of parole worldwide. Add the endemic medical neglect in our prisons, and the result is a massive prison population that is rapidly graying and largely in poor health.

Medical parole and compassionate release are supposed to offer a way home for people who are old or seriously ill so that they can get the care they need. But far too few people actually get out this way. Part of the problem is that the applications benefit greatly from expert medical testimony, a doctor who can review the records, meet the person, and then testify clearly and compellingly about what they find. The market rate for that type of expertise, however, can easily exceed thousands of dollars, which is prohibitively expensive for many incarcerated and detained people.

Mark decided to help fill that gap. And now, through his organization, Medical Justice Alliance, over 800 medical volunteers from across the country are volunteering their time, too. The time commitment for the volunteers is modest. Each physician takes about two cases a year, which require about four to six hours of their time each. But the impacts are real. Historically, compassionate release and medical parole petitions have about a 17% success rate, but in cases supported by MJA clinicians, the success rate exceeds 80%. To date, MJA has backed nearly 1000 cases and freed hundreds of people from prison.

Free Somebody

You can do this. Here's how.

Got 5 minutes?

Take a few minutes to jot down the medical professionals you know (including the ones who provide you care). Tell them about the Medical Justice Alliance and the impact their expertise can make.

Got more time?

Bring your skills inside jails and prisons. There are many programs that allow people to volunteer to teach classes or help run programs in prison. Participating in this programming can help incarcerated people get time off their sentences as well as gain skills that can help them rebuild their lives upon their release. If you’re a mental health practitioner, organizations like Uncommon Law can help you volunteer to provide care to folks in prison. If you’re a medical professional, consider volunteering with the Medical Justice Alliance. And even better than getting people out? Preventing incarceration in the first place. Commit to interrupting criminalization in healthcare with Beyond Do No Harm: 13 Principles for Health Care Providers to Interrupt Criminalization.