[hollywood_court]

I'm sure there are. One of my mother's husbands — she had four, all cops — loved to tell the story about arresting a man outside of a Zippy Mart on Virginia Loop Road in Montgomery, AL.

The cashier called 911 and told them that a man had robbed the store. When he pulled up he found the man sitting on the curb just waiting for him. He had pulled a knife and stolen one pack of Big Red chewing gum from the store.

All because it was getting cold outside and he needed a place to sleep. And he also had a toothache that had been bothering him for weeks. So he hoped to see a doctor while he was in county jail.

[qingcharles]

Out of all the places to be incarcerated, county jails in the USA have a pretty poor record on healthcare. They are run by the counties, not the states, and therefore it is open season on how they provide the services. Most [1] just contract to the lowest bidder private provider. These providers' jobs are to dispense the lowest amount of healthcare to the lowest amount of patients in order to maximize profits. Mostly providing only emergency care to those who are in immediate risk of death. Many also require the prisoners to use the funds provided by their family (for phone calls, letters, clothing, food etc) to pay to even put a medical request into the system in the first place.

In terms of dental, most county jails will only do tooth pulls, not any other type of dental work. They will not try to save teeth at all.

[1] some larger areas like Cook County have their own healthcare systems and can be somewhat more sophisticated and less constrained by monetary concerns

[throwup238]

State prisons are usually only a smidge better than county. They’re a slight improvement in that they’ll give shitty prison dentures instead of just pulling all the teeth.

The other side of it is that prison is the first time many people get any dental work done at all so they cone in with large problems all ready.

[qingcharles]

Yes, sadly a lot of people coming through these institutions have terrible dental issues and probably need a lot of teeth removed already. Hopefully in the future the dream of regrowing adult teeth will come to fruition.

[overfeed]

Tooth regrowth therapy will not be available to them, because the avaerage American id says "If minimum-wage earners don't get healthcare, criminals don't deserve teeth"

[shagie]

> All because it was getting cold outside and he needed a place to sleep. And he also had a toothache that had been bothering him for weeks. So he hoped to see a doctor while he was in county jail.

https://www.wmtv15news.com/content/news/MFD-Shed-fire-at-aba...

    A man committed arson because he said he wanted to go back to prison and learn a trade this time.

    ...

    The suspect said he thought he had done enough to stay locked up earlier this week when he was arrested Monday for stealing $10,000 worth of property and a SUV from family members. Tuesday he was released from the Dane County Jail. He said to an officer that threw him for a loop, and he didn’t know what to do. The officers asked the man about another piece of paper found at the shed which was a handwritten bank robbery note. The suspect said that was plan B in case starting the fire didn’t work. He didn’t want to do that because he didn’t want to scare or hurt anyone. He figured igniting an abandoned shed should cause no significant hardship.

While I can't find it anymore, the police report for it was written in a much more literary style than the typical "notes and facts".