Civil Rights Litigation Involving the Dental Care of Incarcerated Persons

Individuals incarcerated in jails, prisons, and detention centers are unique because they have an entitlement to health care under the U.S. constitution; however, the dental care they receive is highly variable in scope and quality. We identified federal civil rights lawsuits related to dental care by incarcerated individuals that were decided in federal district courts in 2018 and courts of appeals since 1976. Judges dismissed or denied the majority of dental claims. Courts have little guidance to inform decisions relating to dental care because cases rarely have a dental expert and the dental profession has not set forth recommendations about the scope of correctional dental care. In the absence of guidance from the dental profession, oral health policy decisions have been left to the discretion of the courts and correctional administrators (nondentists), yielding inconsistent and often detrimental results.