Jonathan Kirkpatrick

How Prison Smoking Bans Created a Health Crisis

When I first entered Washington State Department of Corrections custody in 1995, the currency was still cigarettes. In any cashless…

July 8, 2024

“Gifted”: When HIV Was a Death Sentence, and Worth It to Get Housing

In the early 1990s, there was a joke people would make about HIV transmission. “AIDS: The gift that keeps on…

June 27, 2024

Grants Pass Homelessness Case, and the Line Between Shelter and Prison

In 2013, the City Council of Grants Pass, Oregon, was looking for a solution to homelessness that didn't involve providing…

June 26, 2024

HIV Rights Advance for Cops, Ahead of the Sex Workers They Criminalize

On March 23, the city of Nashville settled a federal discrimination lawsuit over barring people living with HIV from serving…

March 29, 2024

Spokane Eyes Involuntary Treatment for Anyone Revived With Naloxone

The City Council of Spokane, Washington, has proposed that being administered naloxone should be automatic grounds for mandatory treatment. If…

March 27, 2024

A Life and Death Sentence at Walla Walla, Recounted 50 Years Later

[Read Part 1 of this story here] For a few months in 2019, Don Snook, 71, was transferred to Washington…

February 20, 2024

“Fifty Years Just Ain’t Enough”: Dying in Prison, and Still Denied Release

Donald Snook, 70, has 38 plants in his cell in Washington Corrections Center (WCC). It looks like a jungle. There’s…

February 14, 2024

Naltrexone as Opioid Treatment: Who Does It Work For, Besides Cops?

Of the three Food and Drug Administration-approved medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), two have been shown to reduce rates…

December 22, 2023

Harm Reduction for Short-Term Meth Withdrawal

Withdrawal from opioids is so thoroughly studied that the process is regularly referenced in media and pop culture. Many symptoms…

December 14, 2023

WA Prisons Still Using Drug Test Kits at Center of False-Positives Lawsuit

Sabastian Johnson had been unsuccessfully trying to get copies of a legal document related to his case into Washington Corrections…

December 4, 2023