Last month’s coverage of the conditions at Riker’s Island have people across the country appalled. Dr. Vernier, former physician at Riker’s Island, shared many of his experiences with patients at the prison with NPR, describing the horrific case of Carlos Mercado, who died within 15 hours of arriving at the prison due to complications of his diabetes. He had been denied insulin during the intake process.

Prisoners are the only people in the country with a constitutional right to healthcare, under the 1976 Supreme Court Estelle v. Gamble decision, which held that withholding healthcare from prisoners constituted “cruel and unusual punishment,” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. But isn’t the case of Carlos Mercado grounds for “cruel and unusual punishment?” The right to healthcare seems to be a false promise at Riker’s, especially when we consider the facility’s history.

Riker’s is notorious for cruelty and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Earlier in de Blasio’s appointment as city mayor, a 2014 report from U.S. attorney Preet Bharara detailed graphic human rights abuses and use of violence against adolescent males placed at Riker’s Island. One such account from 2012 reads:

“…Inmate F, a mentally impaired inmate, was repeatedly punched in the face by an officer who has been involved in well over 20 other RNDC use of force incidents. Although the officer admitted that he delivered multiple blows to the inmate’s face, the Department concluded that the force used was appropriate based on the officer’s contention that he was acting in self-defense… There is no video of the incident…

…Inmate F reported that the officer challenged him to a one-on-one fight… According to DOC records, the officer was involved in a total of 24 use of force incidents… from 2007 through early 2013, including eight incidents in 2012 alone. He also has been subject to repeated disciplinary actions.”

Unfortunately, these human rights violations persist not just at Riker’s, but as an inherent part of the nation’s correctional system. Earlier this year, approximately 1,600 prisoners at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn were left with sporadic heating and no lighting over the course of multiple days. Families were left completely in the dark about the fact that their loved ones were suffering in the facility. No generators were powered on to restore lights and heating as detainees pounded on the windows in retaliation to being left to freeze.

There are physical health consequences of being unable to read your medication labels in the dark. However, more latent are the mental health repercussions when prisoners realize they are not just trapped, but that there is nobody to even allow them their basic rights or human dignity. The right to healthcare applies to mental as well as physical health. We need to take a close look at outcomes to truly assess whether the right to healthcare is upheld in prisons or not.

The capacity for cities like New York to harm people through incarceration is vast, and there is a poor track record of tangible benefit coming from imprisonment for those detained nationwide. In 2016, the Avid Prison Project described that solitary confinement routinely exacerbates symptoms for those with mental illness. Moreover, inmates with psychiatric needs are put on waiting lists for hospital treatment much too often, even when hundreds of beds are available. It seems that the right to healthcare is a promise to take two leaps back for every small step forward.

Broken policies that keep the mentally-ill from receiving care in prisons can change. We can start by re-routing those with mental health needs from prisons to programs focused on healing and reintegration for the 42% of inmates at Riker’s Island who suffer from mental illness. Instead of reverting to punishment-based criminal justice, we can transform the lives of those in prison and reduce incarceration rates by expanding proven alternatives to incarceration.

In particular, we should expand New York’s assertive community treatment (ACT) programs for those with mental illness. Programs like Manhattan ACT bring holistic treatment and therapy to those with mental illness who face incarceration due to a felony arrest directly to them in their communities. Manhattan ACT itself has seen a 36% decrease in psychiatric hospitalizations among program participants in Northern Manhattan. In addition to their mental health benefits, ACT programs have also reduced recidivism rates. Nathaniel ACT’s graduates since 2014 have had no violent arrests within one year of graduation and its graduates since 2013 had no new felony convictions within two years. ACT programs turn lives around and are one just solution to the crisis of housing the mentally-ill in federal and state prisons.

The right to healthcare is one of prisoners’ civil rights, protected under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. However, if prisoners are delayed necessary treatment and placed in conditions that worsen their health problems, then this right is far from being upheld seriously. With 45% of federal prisoners having mental health or behavioral problems, we need to expand evidence-based alternatives to incarceration like ACT programs and work with our communities instead of against them.

Syed Kaleem is a medical student at Drexel University College of Medicine. He is a fellow of Physicians for Criminal Justice Reform. @ZaneKaleem on Twitter