Picture this. You book a doctor's appointment months in advance, navigate Byzantine bureaucracy to secure permission slips, then ride in what’s essentially a steel sandwich on wheels with chaperones who moonlight as human handcuffs. Just another Tuesday for people accessing healthcare while incarcerated. Until a fender bender transforms routine transport into hydraulic rescue equipment territory.

When news broke about Singapore’s prison van collision this week, my first thought wasn’t about traffic patterns or vehicle safety ratings, though those matter immensely. It was about the surreal duality of being simultaneously a patient and a prisoner. About how society treats the bodies of those it confines, particularly when those bodies require medical care.

The facts, pared down like overzealous bonsai, sound almost mundane. A prison van returning from Tan Tock Seng Hospital gets rear ended. An inmate and two officers sustain minor injuries. The inmate gets checked at Changi General Hospital and gets discharged. Everyone moves on, until the next collision report.

But lives unlike yours and mine unfold between these headlines. Consider the rhythmic indignities of incarcerated medical care. Requests submitted like prayers to indifferent gods. The claustrophobic choreography of being physically restrained during ultrasounds. The way a routine dental checkup becomes an hours long odyssey involving shackles, paperwork, and enough security personnel to staff a small bank.

And transport ah, transport. Cities spend millions designing wheelchair accessible buses and priority seating for pregnant commuters. Meanwhile, prisoner transport often resembles a dystopian game of musical chairs, where the music stops when someone vomits or, as happened here, when physics decides three vehicles should occupy the same asphalt coordinates.

Let’s address the plastic elephant in the holding cell. When we hear inmate and accident in the same sentence, our lizard brains whisper serves them right. Our collective imagination, fed by prison break dramas and true crime podcasts, conjures images of dangerous individuals being contained for public safety. Never frail grandmothers receiving chemotherapy. Never diabetic uncles needing dialysis. Never the asthmatic kid who made one terrible mistake.

But here’s an uncomfortable truth. Most incarcerated people aren’t serving life sentences for cinematic heists. They’re our neighbors serving months for nonviolent offenses. They’re pretrial detainees who couldn’t make bail over a $500 shoplifting charge. They’re people who, statistics confirm, experience higher rates of chronic illness, mental health conditions, and infectious diseases than the general population precisely the demographic that requires frequent, reliable medical access.

Which brings us to vans. Oh, the vans. Those windowless chariots that shuttle human cargo between facilities and hospitals. How many jurisdictions have you seen retrofit prisoner transport vehicles with the same safety standards we mandate for school buses? Why do we accept that people in custody get crash tested like suitcases when en route to colonoscopies?

One might argue prisons prioritize security over comfort. Valid. Necessary, even. But when safety features become afterthoughts, when seatbelts play second fiddle to shackle points, we create conditions where minor accidents become trap situations requiring hydraulic jaws of life. Where trained officers doing essential work become collateral damage in their own vehicles.

The human domino effect here deserves inspection. For the inmate, this accident isn’t an inconvenience. It’s potentially traumatic reenactment of powerlessness. It’s another brick in the wall of institutional distrust. For corrections officers already working one of society’s most psychologically taxing jobs, it’s unnecessary physical danger layered onto existing stress.

Zoom further out. Picture the families waiting at Selarang Park Complex who get that cryptic call There’s been an incident. Envision hospital staff suddenly treating someone dripping with legal complexities alongside typical emergency chaos. Notice how this single accident briefly fused Singapore Prison Service, Singapore Civil Defence Force, and Changi General Hospital into one reluctant improv troupe.

All this because someone needed a checkup.

Here’s where I confess my own biases. My father was a paramedic who occasionally transported inmates. He’d come home heavy with stories about diabetic prisoners going blind from untreated retinopathy, about kindergarteners visiting parents in custody who’d ask why daddy wore shiny bracelets. These memories temper my analysis like bitters in an otherwise sweet cocktail.

Progress, thankfully, exists. Countries experimenting with telehealth for prisons report fewer risky transports. Facilities integrating electronic health records reduce redundant tests that require outside visits. Some forward thinking jurisdictions even bring mobile clinics to prison yards, circumventing transit dangers entirely.

Basic safety retrofits remain low hanging fruit. Crash tested compartments. Better restraints that don’t become death traps upon impact. Regular vehicle maintenance, because nothing says systemic neglect like bald tires on an inmate transport bus.

The weightier fruit involves reframing how society views incarcerated health. Your blood pressure doesn’t care if you shoplifted bread. Tumors grow irrespective of parole status. Every time we deprioritize prisoner healthcare, we plant seeds for public health crises that eventually escape prison walls through staff, visitors, and released individuals bringing untreated conditions back to communities.

Which loops us back to collisions both literal and metaphorical. That van crumpling on the CTE highway mirrors society’s collision with its own contradictions. We want prisoners punished but not tortured. Contained but not neglected. Punitive measures rationed like cafeteria food, yet healthcare delivered like room service.

As the officers and inmate recover from their bruises, I wonder how many bureaucratic bruises will outlast their physical ones. How many incident reports will collect dust before transport protocols get reviewed. Whether this near miss becomes a catalyst or a footnote.

Because what happened wasn’t just an accident. It was a flare, illuminating how society treats people it would rather forget. A reminder that dignity doesn’t stop at prison gates, that safety isn’t negotiable based on custody status, and that every person riding in those vans someone’s child, parent, or friend deserves to reach medical care without becoming collateral damage en route.

The road to justice, it seems, needs better guardrails.