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By the time Lena Schneck \u201923 reached her sophomore year at Hamilton, she had become disenchanted with classical literature. She wanted to read something more relevant \u2014 a story whose significance extended beyond its pages.<\/p>\n
Then, during a course with her advisor and Professor of Literature Doran Larson<\/a>, she discovered prison writing. These stories spoke to resilience. They spoke to hope, even amid the heartbreaking accounts of prisoner abuse. But more than anything, they revealed what Schneck says are the injustices of the American prison system. She is now looking further into American prisons, specifically in relation to inadequate healthcare treatment, through a Levitt Center-funded project.<\/p>\n \u201cIncarcerated communities are often overlooked,\u201d Schneck said. \u201cI think healthcare is a right, and just because you\u2019re incarcerated, doesn\u2019t mean you should get any less treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n Schneck, who is considering pre-med, decided to focus her research on healthcare to incorporate her passion for medicine into the project. When Roe v Wade was overturned, her research took on a more targeted focus: the lack of reproductive rights and inadequate healthcare services for incarcerated women.\u00a0<\/p>\n Female inmates face increased instances of sexual assault and receive insufficient pre- and post-natal care, Schneck said. These injustices can be traced back to the origin of prisons, which were built with men in mind. Their continual perpetuation, however, is a result of the prison system and governments today. She noted that more than a dozen states continue to allow the shackling of pregnant inmates during birth, according to NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s emotionally difficult content to read and write about, but I think it\u2019s important,\u201d Schneck said. \u201cPrison justice has become a more prevalent issue in the past few years, but it\u2019s still not prevalent enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Schenck\u2019s research involves reading secondary sources for information on how the healthcare system translates into the prison system. For primary sources, she looks for narratives by currently or previously incarcerated people, primarily women. Many of these she finds through the American Prison Writing Archive<\/a>, a site founded by Larson that helps document the experience of prisoners and staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n