Death of Suffolk inmate is being investigated

Death of Suffolk inmate is being investigated
By Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff | January 3, 2008

Suffolk County jail officials and the Boston Police Department are investigating the death of an inmate on New Year's Eve as he was transferred to the maximum-security section of the Suffolk County House of Correction.

Relatives demanded an independent investigation, saying that they had seen his body and that he appeared to have been beaten.

Officials disputed the family's account. They said Darryl Lee Leslie, 41, died shortly after 9 p.m. as he was being transported out of minimum security.

Steve Tompkins, jail spokesman, said officials learned Leslie was "planning a violent attack" on another inmate and were moving him to more restrictive quarters when he became disruptive.

"During the move, he fell into unconsciousness," Tompkins said last night. He would not elaborate, but he said a preliminary investigation by the sheriff's Internal Affairs Division found no wrongdoing by guards. "There was no excessive or unwarranted force used," Tompkins said.

Tompkins said he did not know the names or the number of guards involved in the move. Leslie, who was 6 feet 6 inches tall, would have been accompanied by two or more guards, he said.

Leslie's body was sent for an autopsy by the state medical examiner's office last night, Tompkins said.
He had been incarcerated since Aug. 17 for violating his probation, Tompkins said, adding that Leslie had been in and out of the 1,600-inmate jail over the years on charges of larceny, assault and battery with a box cutter, and receiving stolen property. Tompkins said Leslie had also served time in state prison for armed robbery.

Thomas Leslie, the inmate's younger brother, said yesterday that the family was outraged to learn of his death and questioned whether the guards used force. Thomas Leslie said morgue employees let him and a sister view their brother's head yesterday; the rest of the body was under a white cloth. His face appeared bruised and swollen, he said.

Tompkins said the family had not been allowed to see the body.

Responses to the Globe's series on prison 'suicides'

'A call I pray I never receive'
December 21, 2007

I READ your Spotlight series "Breakdown: The prison suicide crisis" (Page A1, Dec. 9-11) through the eyes of a parent whose son has a mental illness and is an inmate who has experienced solitary confinement.

The phone call that Leslie Aranda received telling her that her son had committed suicide is a call I pray I never receive.

I have experienced the devastating effects of segregating a loved one who is out of touch with reality and cannot comprehend why he is being isolated and forbidden contact with his family and his private possessions.

My son has helped me to understand why someone would prefer death to being psychologically tormented and physically caged with the horrors of his delusions and hallucinations.

In addition to isolation, he has also been the victim of careless errors and dangerous decisions by correctional and medical staff. For example, medications for his physical and mental health problems were either not prescribed or abruptly discontinued or decreased to below therapeutic levels.

Contrary to the way many view people with mental illness, he was very aware of anticipating, and then experiencing, the deterioration in his physical and mental health status.

Other Comments:

I pray every day that my son will survive another day of his incarceration.
JOAN JOHNSTON
Dalton

YOUR SERIES on prison suicides was informative. However, I am concerned that this is presented as a mental health issue.

Many people who entered prisons certifiably sane were driven to suicide by the extremely dehumanizing environment. That needs to be addressed.

JONATHAN CAMPBELL
Jamaica Plain

Patrick aide spurns prison policy change

Patrick aide spurns prison policy change
Rejects call to ban solitary confinement for the mentally ill
By Michael Rezendes and Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff | December 12, 2007

The Patrick administration said yesterday that it would not support a blanket ban on the placement of mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement, rejecting calls for swift action from lawmakers who said the practice only makes sick prisoners sicker and prone to suicide.

"What I've been reading about and what I've heard about is horrible," Governor Deval Patrick said, reacting to a Globe Spotlight report that detailed an alarming rate of inmate suicide and self-inflicted harm behind state prison walls.

Still, the governor's public safety secretary, Kevin M. Burke, said that while the administration is committed to ensuring mentally ill inmates receive proper treatment, an outright prohibition on locking them in isolation could jeopardize the safety of correctional staff, other inmates, and the mentally ill themselves.

"We don't think that's a good idea," Burke said.

But several lawmakers on Beacon Hill, reacting to the Globe report, said they would push for legislation to keep mentally ill inmates out of closet-size solitary confinement cells.

"We have an obligation to treat the people who are ill who are in the state's custody," state Representative Ruth B. Balser, who chairs the Legislature's Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse, said at a State House news conference with prisoner advocates.

She said the bill would "establish a policy which is not only humane, but will ultimately save the Commonwealth money and will protect the public safety."

For nearly 20 years, there have been calls for high-security treatment units for violent, mentally disturbed prisoners. But there has been little progress toward that goal. Earlier this year, the administration secured about $1 million to begin to bring some of those units on line, a measure Burke, in an earlier interview, called little more than a "Band-Aid."

Burke said it would take "several million" dollars to fully fund the solution advocates are calling for.

Balser and state Representative Kay Khan want the correction department to build the high-security special treatment units within each state prison to house mentally ill inmates who are difficult to manage and who pose a danger to themselves or to correction officers and other inmates. The units are cells staffed by mental health professionals and by officers who are trained to deal with mental illness.

"The Department of Correction did not ask to become the state's biggest psychiatric facility, but it is," said Leslie Walker, director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services. She said the department's recent record with mentally ill inmates, documented this week by the Globe, is a continuation of a problem that has festered for two decades.

"What has been lacking is not knowledge, however," Walker said. "It has been political will."

The Globe reported that 15 inmates have committed suicide in Massachusetts prisons in the past three years, and a 16th was left brain dead. Nine of these prisoners were being held in isolation. Many of them suffered from mental illness or drug addiction.

Patrick said the money he wanted to spend on state prisons this year was trimmed by state lawmakers. His spokesman said the governor expects to file legislation "within a month" that would provide an additional $10 million to $15 million in funds for improvements in prison facilities.

"But I don't think anybody believes that the solution resides in more money alone," the governor said. "It's better strategies. It's more accountability. I think we have the right leadership at the [Department of Correction] to help deliver that, and they know I'm watching."

When Patrick was heading the civil rights division of the US Department of Justice during the Clinton administration, he issued sharp criticism of states that he said failed to implement policies that adhered to "notions of humanity and decency" when housing mentally ill inmates. In 1996, for example, Patrick threatened Maryland's governor, Parris N. Glendening, with a lawsuit, in part because of the state's practice of housing mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement.

"Where conditions of segregation greatly exacerbate mental illness, and the period of segregated confinement is prolonged or indefinite, feasible alternative custodial arrangements should be explored," Patrick said then in a 13-page letter outlining his concerns about Maryland prisons.

As prison suicides surged, the Massachusetts correction department sought an independent study, which pointed to prison practices and policies that have exacerbated the problem. Conducted by Lindsay M. Hayes, a national prison specialist, the study, released earlier this year, made 29 recommendations for change that were quickly adopted.

Meanwhile, a nonprofit group has a federal lawsuit saying the agency is housing hundreds of mentally ill inmates under inhumane conditions.

The Disability Law Center, which provides legal assistance to the disabled, said in its lawsuit that housing the mentally ill under such conditions amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and should be banned. It also said the practice of isolating mentally ill inmates runs counter to the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal laws.

"History will look back on this era," Balser said, "and wonder why we were locking up so many people who were sick."

Beth Healy of the Globe Spotlight team contributed to this report.

BREAKDOWN: The Prison Suicide Crisis. Part 3

Advisory: SHaRC cannot confirm the veracity of this series. Reader beware.

Part 3: Desperation, frustration
As prisons become the asylum of last resort for the mentally ill, desperation, frustration and violence are rising on both sides of the cell door. About 50 times each month, inmates are assaulting prison staff members. And, at nearly the same rate, inmates, many of whom say they are abused by officers, attempt to kill or injure themselves. The Spotlight Team examines the tension between mentally disturbed inmates and their jailers.

BREAKDOWN: The Prison Suicide Crisis. Part 2

Advisory: SHaRC cannot confirm the veracity of this series. Reader beware.

Part 2: An inmate's suicide
Nelson Rodriguez was a mentally-retarded 26-year-old when he hanged himself in the notorious 10-block isolation unit at MCI-Cedar Junction. Unable to master the rules of prison life, he was repeatedly punished with solitary confinement.

BREAKDOWN: The Prison Suicide Crisis. Part 1

Advisory: SHaRC cannot confirm the veracity of this series. Reader beware.

Inmates at risk

With 15 suicides in three years, inmates have taken their own lives in Massachusetts prisons at roughly triple the national rate for state prisons. And hundreds more inmates are hurting themselves and attempting suicide. A Globe Spotlight Team investigation found that most of the deaths came after careless errors and deadly decisions by Department of Correction officials and health staff, at times when inmates were obviously at risk.

Photo essay Amid trail of errors in prisons, families left with questions

Photos Jarred Aranda, comforts long forgotten

Notes Read some inmates' last words

Upcoming Boston Globe investigative series on prison 'suicides'

Upcoming Boston Globe investigative series on prison 'suicides' and what you (we) can (will )do

FORWARD SEND FAR & WIDE

Hello All.

I understand that the Boston Globe Spotlight Team will FINALLY publish its investigative series on Massachusetts prisoner 'suicides' beginning next Sunday December 9. Four reporters have been working on this effort for almost 8 months.

The stories - as many of us close to the prisoner families know- are compelling and should 'shock the conscience' of all. We do not believe for one moment that all these deaths were by suicide. Nor do we believe that all those who did commit suicide were 'mentally ill'.

While it may be true that many folks diagnosed as 'mentally ill' may attempt or complete suicide attempts it is the DOC's abuse of prisoners that brings many to a terrible choice: to live in unending deprivation and despair or to end their suffering. A 'healthy, normal’ person would soon sink into depression, anger and hopelessness under the daily conditions inside MA prisons and jails. Prisoners who come into correctional facilities with a diagnosis of psychiatric disabilities are targeted for mistreatment by staff. Indeed there are probably more suicides than the DOC has 'reported.' The so-called good guys are free to torment and humiliate incarcerated citizens. Most legislators will not act to hold the DOC accountable because they’d prefer to look tough–on-crime.

What many should know is that the Commonwealth, the Legislature and correctional legal services, the Disability Law Center and the DOC all agree that the solution to this torture is to spend more money to create special Residential Treatment Units within correctional facilities for 'mentally ill' prisoners. This is the real craziness! The abuse will continue. It'll just be in a different location. What the state does not address is the root cause of the conditions within prisons. RTUs will not stop extra-judicial punishment or, medical neglect. It is not the cure for the lack of oversight. It's just sending another 40 million tax dollars down a rat hole!

It seems that Globe Spotlight Team has worked thousands of hours to bring this story ('suicides') to light. The team is comprised of fabulous journalists. However- they took direction from state-funded agencies. While families of the lost prisoners were consulted at great length- there was very little use of grassroots organizations and activist friends & families.

There is an opportunity to bring OUR insight, our expertise to this issue and to the greater public next week. What will you do? How is the epidemic of suicide connected to the call for a jail in Somerville? Who will speak about state complicity in the death of the prisoners? Who will demand accountability? There are many avenues here for effecting REAL CHANGE.

Let's hear from you.

Thank you.

Susan Mortimer
www.massdecarcerate.org
info@massdecarcerate.org

For Women Behind Bars, "Health Care" Can Be Deadly

For Women Behind Bars, "Health Care" Can Be Deadly
By Silja J.A. Talvi, Seal Press

Why a book about women in prison?

Readers of Women Behind Bars might ask the logical question of why an entire book should be focused on female incarceration while men are still, by far, the majority of people getting arrested and locked up. To many criminologists and writers who cover prison issues, the percentage of women in prison is so small as to warrant little, if any, attention or analysis. (Indeed, at many of the prison-related conferences that I have attended over the years, prisoners are referred to by the male pronoun almost exclusively.)

This question is entirely valid, and deserves a response. Men do face unique issues and hardships in prison, and the overrepresentation of men of color (especially African Americans), the mentally ill, and poor people in general has been more of an overall focus in my work than women's issues in prison until this point.

The deeper I began to delve into the underlying reasons for the rapid growth of girls and women in lock-up, the more insight I gained into a world that few outsiders see, much less understand. Once I began to pay particularly close attention to the ways in which females in the criminal justice system were portrayed in the media, it became clear to me that stereotypes and judgments about "fallen women" from centuries ago were still holding fast.

There's much more to all of this, of course, from the overt medical neglect of women's chronic health needs; to the prevalence of sexual coercion and abuse in women's detention facilities (primarily at the hands of correctional officers, as opposed to other inmates); to the fact that girls and women enter the criminal justice system with far higher rates of drug abuse, sexual violence, childhood abuse, mental illness, and experiences with homelessness. Women are also being punished heavily with undeserved federal "conspiracy charges" for their general unwillingness (or inability) to "snitch" on their loved ones or friends in drug cases -- to the point that this has began to be known as the "girlfriend problem" in the criminal justice system.

Today, the number of girls and women doing time is utterly unprecedented in U.S. history. In 1977, there were just slightly more than 11,000 women in state or federal prison. By 2004, the number of women in prisons had increased by a breathtaking 757 percent. At the end of 2006, there were 203,100 women in jails, state and federal prisons, plus another 1,094,000 women on probation or parole, for a total of 1.3 million females under some form of correctional supervision. (Another 15,000-20,000 girls are being held in juvenile detention.) While Euro-American women still outnumber any other demographic group in jails and prisons, African American women are four times more likely to be locked up than their Euro-American counterparts. (Collectively, African American women and Latinas represent more than 60 percent of women doing time.)

The following excerpt provides just one woman's story from Women Behind Bars. She did not live to tell it, but I am able to share it with you here.

****

I was already several months into the process of writing when I received an e-mail from a woman by the name of Grace Ortega. Grace had heard about the book project, and wanted to know if she could tell me what happened to her daughter, Gina Muniz, after she was incarcerated for the first (and last) time in her life. In truth, I already had enough women's stories to fill the pages of a few books -- if anything, I was overwhelmed trying to figure out which stories not to include -- but there was something about Grace's letter, the sheer urgency of it, that made me want to talk to her.

In our first conversation, Grace and I talked for two hours -- or, to be more precise, I listened for those two hours. It actually didn't click until a few days after that conversation that something sounded very familiar about what Grace had been telling me in great detail. Sure enough, I had once actually written about Gina, albeit briefly, in an article about the allegations and emerging evidence surrounding shoddy, abusive, and sometimes life-threatening medical "care" in two adjacent women's prisons: Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) and the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla.

Grace and I stayed in touch, and I made it known that I would be interested in researching the details of her case for Women Behind Bars. I asked her to send me court documents, medical records, prison memos, grievances, or anything else she might have that would enable me to grasp the chronology of events in Gina's life, and to look more deeply into her situation. A few weeks later, a cardboard box the size of an orange crate arrived at my home. Grace had taken my request seriously and literally; from what I could tell, she had sent me absolutely everything she possessed pertaining to her daughter's case.

I didn't actually examine the contents of the box closely until I was already well into a few chapters of this book. When I did finally start to sort through the material, I saw that Grace had included four 8" x 11" color photos of her daughter. I set them down on my kitchen table and just stood there, staring at them. I don't know how much time passed, but I know it was long enough that the images were actually seared into my mind.

When I mentioned earlier that I was haunted by Gina's story, I meant that I have also been haunted by these images. For a time, I actually buried the photos under piles of paper in a strange attempt to block out my emotional reaction to them. It didn't matter; my mind couldn't erase any of it.

As I write this, these pictures are out of hiding, because I can finally give Gina's story a voice. The photograph that I have placed next to me is of her emaciated body, shackled to a bed in a community hospital near CCWF. Another of Gina's photos, which was taken just two months before her arrest on August 8, 1998, is on top of my desk. This is a snapshot of a naturally, strikingly beautiful woman with thick, dark curls framing her wide smile. Gina's warmth and kindness radiate from that picture, just as the one taken just a few weeks before her death conveys the agony of living in a body taken over by cervical cancer, which had started out as an entirely treatable, early-stage illness.

Gina's face in the hospital picture is that of a much, much older woman. The only parts of her that still look young are her hands and long fingers, which resemble a pianist's. Her left arm is shackled to the bed, per the requirement of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that even terminally ill prisoners be shackled to their beds and guarded twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Her right arm tenderly cups the head of her then-eight-year-old daughter, Amanda.

Her eyes give away the intensity of her suffering, which started out as horribly as it ended. When she was first taken to the LA County Jail, Gina began to bleed so profusely that she would go through many sanitary pads in the space of a few minutes; most of the time, she was just left to bleed all over herself and her cell. When her cries got loud enough, jail guards would typically come over and look at her with disgust, and then throw toilet paper rolls into her cell.

All of this went on until Gina passed out while talking to her mother on the phone after nearly eight months of nonstop bleeding in jail. Gina's collapse was apparently what it took for her pleas for medical assistance to be heard. Even then, it would be months before she was examined properly and diagnosed with Stage IIB cervical cancer, which has a high success rate of being treated and stopped in its tracks if it is treated aggressively and consistently.

Gina's pleas for justice, however, were not heeded. She received a life sentence in state prison, with an additional seven years tacked on. A life sentence would seem to indicate that she had committed a heinous crime, and most certainly a crime of violence. But Gina had actually committed a nonviolent act, although even she thought she should be punished for stealing $200 from a fifty-one-year- old Vietnamese American woman. Gina did not have a gun, knife, or any other weapon with her, but she admitted that she "strong-armed" the woman into going to a nearby ATM and giving her the money. Even the victim herself, when the police arrived on the scene, stated that Gina had not hurt her in any manner. Gina hadn't been a career criminal by any stretch of the imagination.

Her only violations were for car-related misdemeanors, including a June 30, 1998 charge for driving without a permit. (Gina did not do jail time, although the incident did go on her record.) What happened that pushed this twenty-seven-year-old, with no history of criminal behavior, to the point of rob- bing someone?

Grace explained to me that Gina's father's death on April 22, 1998, triggered a serious, debilitating spiral of depression in her daughter's life. Although Gina's father had periodically been a heavy cocaine and heroin user, and Grace had left him when Gina was just a child, Gina still adored him and tried to see him as much as possible.

By all accounts, cocaine hadn't even been a part of Gina's life until after her father died. Although she had gotten involved with men who hadn't exactly done right by her, Gina had set her sights on becoming a nurse and paving the way for a good life for Amanda.

Seeing her grief, a much older, married male family member offered his "support" to Gina, and then gave her a taste of a drug that he promised would help her get through the pain. His encouragement of her cocaine use was obviously far from being in Gina's best interest. When her use turned into dependency, he started demanding sexual favors, which she provided to him for a time in exchange for money to buy more drugs.

The "exchange" went on for a few months, until a day when she asked for $200 and this relative demanded another sexual favor. As Gina later admitted to her mother, she was suddenly consumed by hatred and disgust -- toward him and toward herself. She refused his advances, and he in turn refused the money. But Gina's desire for more cocaine overtook her ability to think clearly. As her mom put it, "Gina did something that she would have considered unthinkable" in the not-so-distant past.

A mere surface examination reveals that Gina's poor attempt at a crime was obviously a fumbling act of desperation by a woman addicted to drugs. But that's not how the court saw it. Gina's own defense attorney took Grace's hard-earned money (which he was eventually forced to return when Grace filed a complaint with the California Bar Association), did nothing to argue her case, and then urged Gina to plead guilty in exchange for a short sentence. While the judge was announcing the terms of her sentence, Gina heard the words "life" and "seven years," and anxiously asked her lawyer what was happening.

As a bailiff would later testify, Gina's lawyer had lied to her, telling her that entering a guilty plea would get her only a seven-year sentence, not life in prison. Gina did not find out until she was sent to CCWF that she was going to spend the rest of her life in prison. Medical "decisions" made at some level in the process ensured that she was denied the necessary hysterectomy, radiation, and chemotherapy that would have saved her life. In essence, her already cruel and unwarranted life sentence was hastened into a death sentence over just a few horrible months of pain and suffering, during which she and her mother pleaded constantly for medical intervention and urgent treatment.

It took many months of letter writing, and the volunteer assistance of the San Francisco-based advocacy group Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, for Grace to get her daughter out of a depressing community hospital room under the constant watch of prison guards. Gina wanted to die at home, and so she did. On September 29, 2000, Gina Muniz slipped away in silence, surrounded by her immediate family, just two days after her mother took her home.

Where is the healing or hope in a story like this? Gina was certainly not given the chance to experience either.

Instead, they have manifested themselves in Grace's ability to turn her own grief into advocacy on the part of other women in prison. Grace has traveled across California, testifying before legislators and advocating for compassionate release for terminally ill women in prison so that they do not have to endure anything akin to the needless and slow death that Gina suffered.

Grace still looks at the pictures of her daughter every day, and she worries that her daughter's life will be forgotten entirely or, worse yet, dismissed as the plight of a criminal whose life and death were of no particular significance. "Please," she asked me again at the end of our last conversation, "Please make sure that Gina isn't forgotten."

Silja J.A. Talvi is a senior editor at In These Times. Her work appears in the anthology, "Prison Nation" (Routledge, 2003).

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/66637/

Inmate hangs himself at MCI-Cedar Junction

Inmate hangs himself at MCI-Cedar Junction
By Aubrey Gibavic, Globe Correspondent July 30, 2007

A federal inmate was found dead early yesterday after he committed suicide in his cell in a segregation unit at MCI-Cedar Junction, authorities said.

An advocate for inmates quickly condemned the death, the third this year in a segregation unit at a state prison, and called for the immediate closure of the section, referred to as 10 Block.

"Ten block is a death trap and needs to be closed immediately," said Leslie Walker, executive director of the Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, a nonprofit prisoners' rights group. She called the event unconscionable and sad.

Correction officers conducting scheduled rounds in half-hour increments at the Walpole facility found Miguel Velasquez, 33, of Lawrence, hanged in his cell shortly before 1 a.m., according to the state Department of Correction.

Three hours before he was found, Velasquez had been transferred to a cell in the segregation unit after a fight with another inmate.

Diane Wiffin, spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, did not have details on the altercation.

Officials at the jail performed CPR, but Velasquez was pronounced dead at 2 a.m. at Norwood Hospital.

The death is under investigation, prison officials said.

Velasquez had been an inmate at the state prison since Oct. 20. He was a federal detainee awaiting trial for possession of a firearm and ammunition, Wiffin said.

"Every suicide is a tragedy, and any death in prison is an unfortunate occurrence," said Wiffin. "We extend our deepest sympathy to the family."

Velasquez's family could not be reached for comment.

Between 2005 and 2006, at least 10 inmates killed themselves in Massachusetts prisons.

In March, inmate Russ Dagenais committed suicide in the segregation unit at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

The Department of Correction, which oversees about 11,000 inmates in 17 facilities, has been working to implement the 29 recommendations of a report released in February by Lindsay M. Hayes, a national specialist in prison suicide prevention.

Hayes criticized the department's handling of inmates at risk for suicide.

"We are in the process of implementing each of the 29 recommendations," Wiffin said yesterday. "We take the Hayes report very seriously."

When one's life isn't worth the trouble

When one's life isn't worth the trouble

Immigrants have died while in U.S. custody, some because jailers denied them medical treatment.

Even hardliners who wish to round up all 12 million illegal immigrants and ship them back from where they came wouldn't, we hope, want to kill any in the process.

Yet immigrants have died in administrative custody because their jailers failed to provide medication or doctors. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently disclosed 62 people have died in the past three years, far more than the 20 previously known deaths.

While ICE hasn't released information about the deaths, The New York Times learned the circumstances of three of the people -- two of whom perished in Virginia prisons.

Neither Sandra M. Kenley nor Abdolai Sall represent the stereotypes that spring to mind when people talk about illegals. Kenley, a legal permanent resident for 30 years, was detained after returning to the U.S. from a visit to Barbados on two old drug-related convictions that made her subject to exclusion. Sall was arrested during an immigration interview because of an old paperwork snafu.

Both told authorities they had serious health problems and pleaded for their medication.

Deaths from medical neglect aren't supposed to occur in U.S. prisons.

In fact, ICE detention standards state that detainees will undergo a medical exam soon after arrest. Only no one checks to see if the mosaic of public and private jails, prisons and detention centers follow the suggested guidelines.

The Senate, faced with mounting reports of deaths and abuses of detainees, unanimously agreed to amend the current immigration bill and establish an office of detention oversight within the Department of Homeland Security.

Now even that paltry gesture is as dead as the immigration bill and as dead as Kenley and Sall.

This country, under President Bush, has ceded its long-held moral high ground on human rights, a trade-off the administration was willing to accept in its ill-fought "war on terror."

Once one category of people is considered unworthy of humane treatment, it becomes easier to devalue the next group and ignore Sandra Kenley's pleas for her blood pressure medication. She was, after all, an immigrant, even if a legal one.

Who's next?

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-123425

OR - Prison suicides linked to isolation

ALAN GUSTAFSON
Statesman Journal

July 8, 2007

Aaron Munoz seethed with anger, masking the shame that engulfed him after he was sexually abused by his juvenile parole officer.

Stanley Reger stood 6-foot-8 and weighed 250 pounds, but he cowered behind prison bars when paranoid schizophrenia filled his mind with imaginary enemies.

Jeremy Ayala was haunted by memories of his pregnant girlfriend's death. He told family members that he was going crazy.

All three men took the same drastic step to end their misery -- suicide by hanging. They became part of a troubling chain of suicides during the past decade in Oregon's prison system.

Since August 1998, 25 inmates have killed themselves. In 2001-02, a two-year period studied by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Oregon's prison suicide rate was nearly double the national average.

A Statesman Journal review of the 25 deaths found common links:

Hanging was by far the most common method of suicide; 22 inmates hanged themselves. Most used bed sheets attached to cell bars, metal grates, vents and other fixtures.

Male inmates accounted for 23 suicides.

Fifteen had known psychiatric problems, ranging from chronic mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

At least 14 killed themselves in the Disciplinary Segregation Unit or the Intensive Management Unit where inmates are confined to their cells for at least 23 hours per day.

Family members of inmates, attorneys and other inmate advocates say the death toll illustrates why prisoners with mental-health problems shouldn't be placed in extreme isolation for violating prison rules.

"Prisons respond to disciplinary issues by segregating people. If a person has a psychotic disorder, that may be the worst thing to do with him," said Robert Joondeph, the executive director of the Oregon Advocacy Center, which has represented inmates in civil rights lawsuits.

Frank Colistro, a Portland psychologist who has worked in Oregon's prison system for 28 years as a private consultant and contractor, said it's no mystery why the majority of prison suicides here and across the country occur in disciplinary segregation units.

"Segregation is to prison kind of what jail is to your community, so you're going to expect more psychopathology," he said. "You can expect that probably 75 percent of them are going to be anti-social personality types, which means among other things that they're going to be impulsive, and impulsivity is a major risk factor for suicide."

The number of suicides hasn't gone unnoticed by the Oregon Department of Corrections.

As early as 1999, prison officials sought expert advice for curbing suicides.

At that time, the DOC contracted with Lindsay Hayes, a nationally recognized suicide expert, to review five suicides clustered within a six-month period. Four of the five suicides happened in disciplinary segregation cells.

In May 1999, Hayes issued a package of recommendations, including increased suicide-prevention training for prison staff members and enhanced screening measures to identify inmates for suicide risks. He also advised against placing suicidal inmates in isolation cells.

"The use of isolation not only escalates the inmate's sense of alienation, but also further serves to remove the individual from proper staff supervision," Hayes warned.

Oregon's prison system has taken many steps recommended by Hayes in 1999 and in a more recent report, officials said.

"We're doing an increased amount of training," said Jana Russell, the prison system's new administrator of Counseling and Treatment Services. "We're really in a much better position to work together to solve this problem. It's not one of those things that is hidden anymore."

Russell formerly was in charge of mental health programs at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, which has not experienced a suicide since it opened in April 2002.

She recently replaced Arthur Tolan as head of mental health services for the entire 13,500-inmate prison system. Tolan became clinical director at the Oregon State Hospital.

Russell said her experience with prison officials and staffers who have dealt with suicides tells her that they don't take it lightly.

"It's the phone call nobody ever wants to get. I'm talking about staff, as well as the (inmate's) family," she said. "We hurt when that happens, and you start to do all the second guessing about what could have been done differently to prevent it. It's downright painful. I always think, 'What if it was my child?'"

Anguished letter to family

Jeremy Ayala wrote an anguished note to family members before he killed himself in May, becoming the 25th suicide victim since August
1998.

"Every day is hell for me," he wrote from the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem. "I just want it to stop."

His letter arrived at his parents' Salem home on May 9. Mary Ayala felt a wave of fear as she read her son's scrawled note.

The letter made her nervous, she said, because he had tried to kill himself in the state penitentiary's Intensive Management Unit in October and intentionally cut himself in his OSCI cell in early May.

Hoping to alert prison officials to her concerns about the letter, Mary Ayala made several calls to OSCI.

However, she quickly became frustrated when her calls hit voice-mail messages. She hung up, not knowing that pressing "0" would have summoned a real person at the prison. She told herself that she would try again the next day.

It couldn't wait. Late that night, Jeremy Ayala tied a bed sheet to the bars of his cell, twisted it around his neck and hanged himself.

A pre-dawn phone call from a prison chaplain awakened the Ayalas to the saddest day of their lives: Their son had been transported to Salem Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:41 a.m. May 10.

Since her son's funeral, Mary Ayala has wrestled with conflicted feelings of anger, sorrow and guilt.

"Who do I blame?" she said, her voice cracking with emotion. "A little of everybody. Me for not getting hold of anyone at the prison. Him for doing it. And them for not keeping an eye on him."

Oregon State Police are conducting an investigation into Ayala's death, a standard procedure after a prisoner suicide. The inquiry has not been completed, officials said.

Previous suicide attempt

Ayala was a repeat offender who told his mother that he wanted to turn around his life. He planned to enroll at Chemeketa Community College in Salem and become a drug and alcohol counselor or a gang counselor, she said.

Drugs, crime and tragedy demolished his good intentions.

In July 2006, his pregnant girlfriend, Haley Fitch, 28, died from a drug overdose in Hood River.

"She OD'd and died in his arms," Mary Ayala said.

In August, Ayala returned to prison to serve a 15-month sentence for being a felon in possession of a weapon. His mother said the gun charge stemmed from her son's anger over Fitch's fatal overdose and his desire to exact revenge on the alleged drug dealer. Ultimately, he didn't use a gun, but he was sent back to prison for having it.

Memories of his girlfriend's death brought nightmares and bouts of deep depression for her son, Mary Ayala said.

Anti-depression medication failed to ease his torment: "It made it worse. He kept saying his medication was making him crazy," she said.

Prison officials would not discuss Ayala's mental health history or treatment, citing confidentiality. Prison reports confirmed that Ayala tried to kill himself in October.

At that time, he was housed in the IMU, the penitentiary's top-security unit.

After midnight on Oct. 14, reports say, Ayala draped a sheet across the front of his single cell and disobeyed officer orders to take it down.

Two officers made a cell check shortly before 1 a.m. They found Ayala slumped on the floor and unconscious. A sheet was wrapped around his neck. Several empty aspirin packages were found on the floor. Officers estimated that Ayala had swallowed 50 to 60 tablets.

Ayala was carried out of his cell and placed on his side "in a recovery position." Medical personnel arrived about 1 a.m. Ayala was transported to Salem Hospital for treatment and observation.

'Time to go'

In the wake of his attempted suicide, Ayala was admitted to the Special Management Unit, a 40-bed psychiatric unit within the 2,300-inmate penitentiary.

His admitting form indicates that he was placed on a suicide watch.

Ayala stayed in SMU for five months. In mid-March, he was transferred into the general population at OSCI, a medium-security prison in southeast Salem that doesn't have a psychiatric unit.

During his last two months of tumult, Ayala bounced back to the penitentiary's psych unit for another stint of treatment, then was returned to OSCI's mainstream population. Family members said his condition deteriorated.

"He kept hearing voices," Mary Ayala said. "He imagined that people were yelling at him. He said he was going crazy."

On May 2, Ayala wound up in disciplinary segregation -- inmates call it the hole or the bucket -- for breaking two rules: possessing contraband (radio earbuds) and assaulting a fellow inmate.

A prison hearings officer sentenced Ayala to 84 days in segregation for the assault and seven days for the contraband violation.

Confined to his disciplinary cell for 23 hours a day, Ayala drew staff attention by cutting himself, records show.

"I asked Inmate Ayala if he could give me his word that he would not try to harm himself again," a corrections sergeant wrote. "Inmate Ayala said: 'You got my word, I'm all done with that.'"

At some point, Ayala scrawled his final letter to family members:

"I don't know what to do anymore. I can't fight this s--- no more. Every day is hell for me. I just want it to stop. ... I go out of my way to stay out of trouble and look what happens. ... I'm tired of being a f---up. And it's time for me to go."

Suicide linked to abuse

Shortly before 9 p.m. Jan. 28, 2005, Aaron Munoz hanged himself with a bed sheet attached to a vent in the back corner of his segregation cell in the penitentiary's Intensive Management Unit.

The 21-year-old inmate was about a week away from his prison release date.

Kelly Ann Mills of Portland, who raised Munoz from infancy, said her nephew killed himself because he was embarrassed about being sexually abused by Michael Boyles, his juvenile parole and probation officer, and because he dreaded being labeled as a snitch for testifying against him.

"One of the things he said to me is, I don't want to be known as a snitch, and I don't want to be known as a homosexual," Mills said. "In his circle, in his group, you didn't rat somebody out."

Boyles was arrested in February 2004 and charged with numerous counts of sodomy, abuse and misconduct against five boys he supervised in the 1990s.

Munoz reportedly met Boyles when he was 13 and accused of shoplifting and breaking into a state-owned car. Eventually, he was placed under Boyles' supervision for four years until 2001, when he was sent to prison for third-degree assault.

Angry and defiant, Munoz landed in the penitentiary's Intensive Management Unit, housed among the worst of the worst convicts in Oregon's prison system.

The Intensive Management Unit operates as a rigidly controlled mini-prison within the prison. High-risk prisoners are confined for more than 23 hours a day in electronically controlled cells.

When an inmate leaves his cell, usually to shower or exercise, he is handcuffed, tethered with a leash and escorted by two officers.

Mills said she thinks that keeping Munoz in extreme isolation amounted to state-sponsored abuse.

"In that kind of environment, you have no real communication with anybody," she said, "and it just gave him too much time to think. Here's this kid that pretty much got the raw end of the deal and took what he figured was his only way out."

Mills visited Munoz on the day he killed himself. She said he was in a foul mood, despite his looming release date.

"I had never seen him that angry," she said. "There really was no talking to him."

After Munoz killed himself, prosecutors dropped about 20 charges against Boyles, all connected to his alleged sexual abuse of Munoz. Prosecution of the parole officer continued, however.

In October 2005, nine months after Munoz committed suicide, Boyles was sentenced to 80 years in prison for sexually abusing four other teenage boys he supervised in the 1990s.

Wrongful death lawsuit

Oregon State Police denied the newspaper's request to release the agency's investigative report on Munoz's suicide, citing pending litigation.

A wrongful death lawsuit was brought against the state this year in connection with Munoz's suicide.

The lawsuit, filed in Marion County Circuit Court on behalf of Munoz's relatives, alleged that the penitentiary failed to provide him with adequate supervision and mental health care.

Prison officials "knew or should have known that depression can lead to suicide and that Munoz was depressed," according to the suit.

"Defendant State of Oregon also knew or should have known that Munoz had post- traumatic stress disorder as a result of his sexual abuse as a minor by a State of Oregon juvenile parole and probation officer," the suit said, "and that Munoz had, at the time of his suicide, been participating in the investigation and prosecution of his abuser which caused Munoz significant anxiety."

The suit also claimed that prison officers and managers failed to conduct sufficient checks of his cell, failed to meet staffing requirements for the Intensive Management Unit and permitted staff to "work for such extended periods of time that their effectiveness was compromised."

Mediation aimed at settling the suit is nearing conclusion, officials in the state Department of Justice said. They said no details would be made public until the case is resolved.

Prisons bulge with mentally ill

Roughly 40 percent of Oregon's 13,500 prison inmates need mental-health care, but many don't receive services, according to corrections department reports.

Most worrisome are the 11 percent known to suffer from severe and persistent mental illnesses, such as depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

That's nearly 1,500 inmates -- twice the number of patients housed at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, the state's largest psychiatric facility.

Reasons given for influxes of mentally ill prisoners range from surging numbers of methamphetamine-addicted criminals to gaping holes in community mental-health care for poor and low-income Oregonians.

Corrections officers and prison managers face clashing demands of tight security and treatment as they try to keep the peace in a packed prison system.

While critics say prison mental-health care is deficient, others describe it as more than adequate.

"If you want to compare it to mental health care in the community, it's way better in prison because many people in the community don't have any care other than using the ER," Colistro said.

DOC reports point to numerous shortcomings in prison mental health care. Among the problems cited by a 2004 task force appointed by Corrections Director Max Williams:

Mental-health care wasn't being provided to more than 2,000 inmates identified as being in need of such care.

With 72 psychiatric beds in the entire prison system, Oregon ranked 49th in the nation for the number of such beds.

Forty percent of all inmates in disciplinary segregation cells were mentally ill, and they were being supervised by staff members who had no mental-health training.

Mentally ill inmates frequently were moved without regard for their treatment.

Prison officials said gaps in mental-health services are being plugged with upgrades.

For example, the 2007 Legislature, which recently approved spending a record $1.3 billion on the prison system over the next two years, allocated funding to add 25 to 30 more psychiatric beds.

That infusion will raise to about 110 the total number of prison beds available for psychiatric crises, far below the 360 called for by the 2004 task force.

Suicide chain unfolds

Nearly a decade after her son Stanley Reger hanged himself at the penitentiary in Salem, Joan Nemchick of Stayton was surprised to hear about 24 ensuing suicides.

After a moment of reflection, she changed her mind.

"So many of them have mental illness, and that gets to them when they don't have any way to cope," she said. "So I guess maybe I'm not surprised."

When Reger skipped his psychiatric medication, symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia filled his brain with terrorizing delusions. He perceived enemies bent on his destruction.

On Aug. 30, 1998, the huge inmate hanged himself with a bed sheet in his general population cell at the state penitentiary. He was 50 years old.

For Reger, the penitentiary's psychiatric unit was "the one sanctuary that he had," Nemchick said. He couldn't handle regular prison routines.

His suicide came less than two weeks after he graduated from a six-month program designed to help mentally ill inmates live in the general prison population.

"He came back, and he was afraid to go to the pill line, so of course, he wasn't taking his medication and he decompensated very quickly," Nemchick said.

After her son died, Nemchick received a letter he had mailed from the penitentiary. Reger described being terrified in his general population cell, on the penitentiary's D Block.

"I'm still pretty scared, and they are still yelling at me the word, 'RAT,' and threatening to kill me -- so I'm not dead yet," he wrote.

He hanged himself the day after he wrote the letter.

agustafs@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6709

CA DOC reduces number of prisoner suicides

In California prisons, reducing inmate suicides a rare success By DON THOMPSON Associated Press Writer News Fuze Article Launched:05/27/2007 12:38:22 PM PDT FOLSOM, Calif.- Every 30 minutes, day and night, guards walk the tiers of the isolation unit at California State Prison, Sacramento, checking inmates to make sure they don't kill themselves. The guards have been doing so since October, when the prison system instituted a series of reforms to cut the high rate of inmate suicides. The steps were prompted by a federal judge's finding that a disproportionate number of suicides occurred in the isolation cells used to segregate inmates for disciplinary or other reasons. The measures, which include screening inmates for potential suicidal tendencies and training guards how to intervene, appear to be making a difference. Last year, a record 43 inmates killed themselves in California prisons. California's rate of 25.5 deaths per 100,000 inmates is nearly double the nationwide prison suicide rate of 14 per 100,000, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Nearly half those deaths were in California's isolation units. Through Friday, 13 inmates had committed suicide, compared with 19 during the same period a year ago. Three were in the segregation units, down from seven in those cells at the same time last year. ... www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_6002295?nclick_check=1 To unsubscribe from the PLN listserv click: Remove From List Prison Legal News operates the premier prison and jail litigation and news website in the world. To subscribe or for more information go to: www.prisonlegalnews.org. PLN is a section 501(c)(3) non profit, to make a donation and help support our work click PLN Donations. Contact PLN editor Paul Wright at: pwright@prisonlegalnews.org. Contact PLN associate editor at: stein919@gmail.com. PLN Online is compiled and edited by PLN. PLN publishes links to web pages maintained, controlled, and operated by third parties. PLN is not responsible in any way for the content on any third-party website to which PLN publishes links. The views, commentary, and opinions expressed on said third-party websites are solely and exclusively those of the individuals or entities who maintain and supply content to said sites. Please refer to the access and copyright policies of third party websites for information regarding reproduction or dissemination of copyrighted material. Copyright © 2007, Prison Legal News. All rights reserved.

Fw: [prisonersolidarity] In Memory of Daniel McCauley

In Memory of Daniel McCauley

Dear All,

We have learned that 26-year-old Ohio State Penitentiary prisoner, Daniel McCauley, committed suicide last weekend. Daniel was a contributing author to Prisonersolidarity. Fellow inmates described him as a decent and generous person who cared about others. Daniel's crime was committed at the age of 16. Deeply and sincerely regretful, this young man dreamt of a society that would give youth offenders a second chance, rather than allowing them to "rot" behind bars, at a supermaximum security facility.

We are re-posting Daniel McCauley's Prisonersolidarity essay, in honor of his memory and his dream. Please circulate widely.

Prisonersolidarity
- - - - - - - - -

Saving Our Youth
http://www.prisonersolidarity.org/DanielMcCauley.htm
By Daniel McCauley, Prisonersolidarity.org
Aug. 10, 2006

My name is Daniel McCauley and I'm a lifer at Ohio's only "super-max prison," the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. I started my sentence at the young age of 16 after the youthful mistake of drinking beer, doing drugs, and running with the wrong crowd. One fateful night I was with a couple of childhood friends when someone came up with the idea of breaking into an unoccupied house. "Just some troubled youths being troubled youths." Someone ended up being in that supposedly unoccupied house, and the intended "breaking in and entering" became much more. It led to the aggravated crimes of burglary, robbery and murder.

To make matters worse, while my co-defendant and I awaited our hearing (to be bound over and tried as adults), we escaped from the Juvenile Justice Center. We were so out of control and homesick that we ran. We were captured and re-arrested three hours later.

During my short and troubled lifespan I've made mistakes that I've come to regret deeply. But the greatest mistake, which I'm forced to live with day after day, is the knowledge that I was involved in the taking of another human being's life. This is something I will not be able to compensate for as long as I live. I mourn daily the death of that innocent victim and can only imagine the loss and pain that the victim's family has had to endure. No matter what side you view if from it is and always will be an incredibly tragic event for all who were involved.

But the youth that I was yesterday is not the man that I have become. Today I find myself in control of my thoughts and actions. Still, I am not perfect and have gotten into minor trouble while serving my time. But when you throw a kid into a rainstorm, he is bound to get wet.

As I sit here today, at the age of 25, and take the time to repent and think about the senseless pain I've caused others (my family included), I find myself wanting to make things right. Now that I've grown up and become wise enough to think for myself, I want to give something back to humanity. In fact, I feel it is my obligation. I've lost a lot through thoughtless action, so hopefully I can somehow use my voice/pen to stop someone else from making the same mistakes - mistakes that would cost him and others a great deal of unwarranted grief.

I see kids every day, coming to prison at age 16 and younger, making their own costly mistakes, and then doing 15, 20 even 30 years to life. Speaking from experience, I can understand how some of our youth can get out of control and have no sense of positive direction. And that's only the surface of the problem. What I can't understand, however, is how society can so easily give up on its youth. Why do we pin such outrageous sentences on them, with the intention of supposedly teaching them a lesson? It's plain to see that this vindictive method is not solving youth crime. Prison should be about reform, and not mere punishment, at least for its youth. Our youth need to be given the proper tools, to think rationally for themselves, so they can become productive members of this same society that has allowed them to be thrown away. In my opinion the best tool you can give a prisoner is a good education. Unfortunately, instead of adopting education as a rehabilitative approach for our youth, our leaders spend hundreds of thousands of dollars locking up juvenile offenders for almost an eternity. If the courts and politicians would spend that money on our troubled youths' educations, they could change the lives of many lost souls.

Aren't we still human, after all? To err is human. No human is infallible. It's essential that people begin to see us as humans and not animals or unsympathetic monsters. Why are we so focused on severely punishing our youth? Life goes on, people learn and change. They don't stay in one moment of time. I myself have changed. Many youth grow up and no longer have the passion for crime and all the troubles that come with it. Yes, we have committed a crime and are in prison. But if we could live a productive life in society, why not give us another chance at life? Following a personal transformation and decision to help others, I think the system should evaluate a prisoner's change seriously consider granting freedom.

The individual is able to change when given the tools to do so. Allow us the opportunity to help others, rather than mercilessly housing us in prisons, to rot. It may take different amounts of time for people to change for the better. But the one thing that does not change is our outrageous prison sentences. Beyond our youthful mistakes, it is the system itself that holds us back. Let us save our youth by extending to them the tools they need to prevent them from drowning in self-destruction.

Daniel McCauley #355-364
OSP - 878 Coitsville-Hubbard Rd
Youngstown, Ohio 44505

I appreciate your taking the time to read my testimony and hope that I may help at least one person to learn from the mistakes that I've made, and not end up where I am. If you would like to correspond with me or if there is anything else I can tell you that may help, please feel free to write to me. If you'd like to receive a response, just include a pre-stamped envelope with your return address on it. Again thank you for listening to what I have to say, and don't ever give up.

Globe article about Kelly Jo Griffen - Before inmate's death, a delay in care

See also SHaRC's web page for Kelly Jo, with the excellent, 2003 Phoenix article by Kristen Lombardi, our human rights violation report and Kelly Jo's family web page links. The Globe article below affirms what the family and allies have contended from the moment her death was known. What we were demanding at the time of her death is still relevant today. These demands are pasted below the article.

 

http://www.massdecarcerate.org/kellyjo.html

 

 

 

A small garden at the home of Karen Scovil in Malden memorializes her niece, Kelly Jo Griffen, 24, who died at the state prison in Framingham in July of 2003. (Aram Bogosian for the Boston Globe)

Before inmate's death, a delay in care

Framingham records examined

By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff  |  May 6, 2007

The state's official account of Kelly Jo Griffen's death, four years ago in a prison infirmary, describes a swift eight-minute decline, from the first warning sign to lifelessness.

But medical records obtained by the Globe indicate that the medical staff at MCI-Framingham was aware of Griffen's deteriorating condition much earlier that morning of July 23, 2003, and took no action to help her, as she battled the side effects of heroin and alcohol withdrawal. Two hours before a doctor started CPR, a nurse reported that she attempted three times to measure Griffen's blood pressure but could get no reading. She also was unable to detect a pulse.

According to the records, nurse Magdalena Grodzki told Griffen -- whom she described as alert, but shaking -- that a doctor would check her shortly, but there is no indication that he ever arrived.

Since Griffen's death, as she awaited arraignment on a minor drug charge, the system's healthcare provider has ordered staff training in detoxification. But the Department of Correction has never publicly disclosed what happened to the 24-year-old mother from Lynn or launch an investigation into who -- if anyone -- was responsible for her death.

In its only public statement, issued in October 2003, the state program that provides healthcare services in the prisons asserted that the medical staff "immediately provided all necessary care and treatment." In its mortality review, the department commended the staff for its quick response when Griffen stopped breathing.

"She never should have died," said her aunt, Karen Scovil of Malden, who is caring for Griffen's two daughters, ages 7 and 5. "If they had taken her to a hospital or given her fluids and just paid a little more attention to her, her two little kids would have their mom right now. Something is wrong here."

Griffen's death occurred a month before the prison murder of defrocked priest John Geoghan, and gained headlines only after his death raised questions about the safety of inmates in the state's prison system.

Despite a series of commissions and investigations, the Department of Correction remains in turmoil four years later, as it grapples with a high suicide rate and disclosures that inmates have been confined longer than their sentence allows.

The family has filed a wrongful death suit against Grodzki, Nicholas Rencricca, and Khalid Mohamed, the two doctors who were in charge of her care the morning she died. In the suit, lawyer Howard Friedman alleges that Griffen died of dehydration -- after being unable to keep down the medication she was given to calm her withdrawal symptoms. Over several hours, Friedman believes, the dehydration changed Griffen's blood chemistry and triggered a heart attack. A medical examiner's report the day after her death cited cardiac arrest and flu-like symptoms.

Nearly three months after her death, UMass Correctional Health -- a program run by the University of Massachusetts Medical School to provide medical services in the prisons -- said that "the immediate cause of her death remains unknown both to us and to the medical examiner."

Lawyers for the defendants declined to comment on the events that led to Griffen's death, as did officials from the Department of Correction and UMass Correctional Health, citing the pending lawsuit. Messages left at the home of the nurse and the offices of the two doctors also were not returned. They all still work in the prison system.

"Our sympathies go out to the family," said James Bello, who represents UMass Correctional Health and two of the defendants, Grodzki and Rencricca. "We continue to believe both nurse Grodzki and Dr. Rencricca acted appropriately in the care and treatment they provided. At the end of the day, if this case were to proceed to trial, we believe the jury would agree."

Mohamed's lawyer, Kurt Schmidt, also declined to comment.

But medical records turned over to her family by lawyers for the state, raise a series of new questions about her care. At 6:20 a.m., the records show, Rencricca's name appears on an order clearing Griffen for a court appearance that day. That was less than an hour after Grodzki was unable to read her blood pressure on three attempts or to find a pulse, and just an hour before she was found not breathing. But the records do not indicate that Rencricca actually saw her until he was summoned to resuscitate her at 7:30 a.m.

And while UMass Correctional Health's own rules, included among the litigation records, require that inmates be transferred to a community hospital if their condition deteriorates during detoxification, Griffen was left in the medical unit at MCI Framingham as her health declined.

In addition, a Globe review of records of the state's Board of Registration in Nursing show that Grodzki, the nurse who cared for Griffen during her final hours, had previously been disciplined for providing substandard care.

Grodzki was placed on probation by the nursing board for six months in 2001 after she gave the wrong medication to an 88-year-old patient at the Providence Extended Care Center in Worcester.

Grodzki was terminated, the nursing board records say, after she gave insulin instead of the blood thinner heparin to the patient, who became unresponsive. The patient was rushed to the emergency room, where he was stabilized.

Correctional Medical Services, which ran the prison health system until 2003, hired Grodzki after that episode. As part of the probation agreement, CMS was required to monitor Grodzki's performance and report back to the board. In December 2001 and March 2002, CMS reported that Grodzki was doing a good job.

Griffen's circuitous trip to Framingham began on Sunday, July 20, 2003, when she was spotted by Lynn police as she walked to the beach with her two girls and mother, according to details provided by the Essex Country district attorney's office, Griffen's aunt, and her lawyer. The police arrested her on an outstanding warrant charging her with leaving the scene of an accident and driving without a license. While at Lynn District Court on Monday, authorities discovered a second warrant -- alleging possession of a syringe -- issued in Salem. Griffen was taken to MCI Framingham for the night so she could be transported to Salem District Court for her arraignment the next morning.

But by the time she arrived at Framingham, Griffen, who also suffered from diabetes and a seizure disorder, was in the throes of withdrawal. According to medical records, she complained of nausea and shakes. The next day a doctor found her too sick to go to court, noting that she was "in severe withdrawal."

Throughout the day, according to the records, she reported feeling "so sick." At 1 a.m., less than seven hours before she died, she told Grodzki she was having a seizure. The nurse reported seeing her vomit. There is no sign in the medical records that a doctor saw Griffen at any time that night.

An inmate in the room with her said Griffen was "sick from the second she got there" and got worse fast.

"She was very, very pale and had to keep getting up to vomit," said Diane Solari, who was also detoxing from heroin. "They were giving her medication for vomiting and diarrhea but whatever she took she threw up immediately five minutes later. Soon she couldn't get up to go to the bathroom and was throwing up in a bucket. I'd empty it and she'd throw up again."

"She was so sick," said Solari, who shared a room with Griffen and two other inmates. "She was begging for an I.V. She must have said it 30 times."

Before sunrise, Solari said, Griffen became too weak to walk and fell on her face trying to get to the toilet. "She was drawn pale, gray. She couldn't stand up," Solari said." She could talk but her mouth was dry. I never saw anybody that sick."

Solari, by now in severe withdrawal herself, was laying on a bed waiting to take a shower. "Someone said, 'She's turning blue.' I looked and Kelly was bluish. I screamed Code 99," she said, the designation for a medical emergency.

At that point, she said, the medical staff "came running." They were not able to revive her.

Since Griffen's death, the Department of Correction and UMass have taken steps to improve the prison medical system, particularly for those detoxing from drug or alcohol addiction, according to inmates and lawyers familiar with the system.

"Until now the department's oversight of the medical providers has been little more than bean counting -- did they file their reports on time?" said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which represents prisoners. "But things are getting better. They've hired better doctors. We heard from prisoners at Framingham that there is a great doctor who spends a ton of time with each woman."

That provides some solace to Griffen's aunt, who has been clamoring for change since Griffen's death.

"People who have drug habits or mental issues, they don't belong in prisons," said Scovil. "They belong in rehab centers and hospitals. Major changes need to be made. I'm hoping Kelly Jo's death at least brings attention to that fact. Maybe they'll make the changes and save some lives. Too many people are dying." 

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

We Call For:

An independent outside investigation of Kelly Jo Griffen's death - to be followed by vigorous prosecution in the criminal and civil courts;

The DoC to provide all legally mandated medical services to prisoners and detainee's as required by the Community Standards statutes, subject to legal enforcement;

Medical staff to comply with standards of humane care of all prisoners as per United Nations Standard Minimum Rules of Treatment of Prisoners, of which the United States is a signatory;

The new provider of Massachusetts prison health care, University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center (UMMMC,) to be autonomous. All new medical staff to report directly to UMMMC. Remove former Correctional Medical Services (CMS) personnel now employed by UMMMC.

Clear demarcation between Department of Correction (DoC) and medical personnel including immediate and full accounting by all agencies involved. (The same officials who chose to not to renew CMS' contract kept all the direct providers in place thereby ensuring brutal medical conditions remain unchanged. Some of these folks are well connected to Sheriff Ashe's House of Correction and helping him to fulfill his dream of a high-tech lock-up for women. His associates claim they want to build the jail as a matter of fairness to women.)

We demand REAL PUBLIC SAFETY:

An independent Citizen Advisory Board to be implemented immediately;

That those involved in abuse and subsequent cover-up be terminated and prosecuted;

No new women's jail in Chicopee;

Drug treatment - not the War on Drugs;

An end to using  taxpayer monies to harm the community.

 

www.MassDecarcerate.org

info@MassDecarcerate.org

SHaRC testimony - 5/1 state house hearing on prisoner suicide

The Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Abuse and the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security
Oversight Hearings on Prison Suicide and Prison Mental Health

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 1:00 PM, Room B-1

Testimony of the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition

1. Introduction

Reading: The Pain of the Soul – letter from prisoner Billy S.

Hello, we are members of the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition. As a grassroots group of family and friends of prisoners, we have a perspective, grounded in experience over many years, that legislators and policy makers lack access to. It is good to be here today. We think the General Court's understanding of suicide and the problems of those deemed mentally ill in Massachusetts prisons has been framed too narrowly, and we fear the proposed solutions will not work. We have an alternative perspective and set of solutions to offer.

As of today there are close to 2,300,000 people in prison. The individuals we are talking about today, those who have purportedly committed suicide, have family and friends standing behind them, and we, as SHaRC members, will be here to continuously remind everyone of this. As we look around this room it is apparent that the greatest experts on the issues of suicide in prison are not here--the prisoners themselves! It is essential that any review take into account the voices of those who have been silenced far too long. As the reading we began with stated, these suicides will continue until individuals can have have a sense of empowerment and hope.

2. Role of Prison Conditions in Generating Hopelessness

The current discussion around suicide within the DOC is too narrowly defined. Some suicides will likely prove to be murders. As well, DOC policy and practice creates the conditions which incite and assist suicide. For the record, SHaRC does not believe that all those said to have killed themselves did nor that all deaths as a result of state sanctioned violence have been reported. Further, why does the panel assume that all people who committed suicide were mentally ill?

Psychology and criminal justice point to character to explain why people go to prison and their behavior inside. Rather, it is institutions that shape individuals. Intended as a two week simulation of prison life, the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment "had to be ended prematurely after only six days because, as experiment leader Philip Zimbardo writes, "our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress." This Experiment also illustrates how the "culture of cruelty" --endemic in youth detention centers, mental institutions, jails and prisons--is perpetuated.

While we acknowledge that some behaviors may be diagnosed mental illness, designating and placing the focus on "mentally ill" prisoners allows administrators, guards and staff to evade responsibility for the cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions to which suicidal and other prisoners react. Further, labeling people as "mentally ill" masks "disablement" caused by child abuse, poverty, racism, sexism, etc.. Coping responses to inequality and unhealthy and unsafe conditions must be differentiated from mental illness. Counterproductive measures meted out for such coping responses punishes individuals unfairly for the harms we have inflicted upon them. Vitally important questions are not asked such as why so many are diagnosed mentally ill and how do we restore social policies and practices to alleviate disability while fulfilling human rights obligations, reducing crime rates and ultimately, prisoner suicides.

The International Convention Against Torture governing imprisonment has been ratified by the U.S. From the extremes of sensory deprivation to seemingly mundane daily occurances, prison policy and practice violates human rights. In addition to concerns about our international obligations these violations of rights mean that many leave prison worse off than when they went in. Post Incarceration Syndrome (PICS) is caused by incarceration. 60% of prisoners have been in prison before. They are at even greater risk for further harm, again subjected to "environments of punishment with few opportunities for education, job training, or rehabilitation. The symptoms are most severe in prisoners subjected to prolonged solitary confinement and severe institutional abuse."

With regard to the recent investigations into DOC suicides, we must ask if it is advisable to believe that DOC administrators, staff and guards are always truthful? In our experience, collusion among is common in falsifying reports to shift responsibility onto prisoners for DOC wrongdoing. We do not believe that all recent mortality reviews provided to Mr. Hayes are truthful and are dismayed by the lack of skepticism by legislators.

Will the DOC satisfactorily implement whatever recommendations are ultimately settled upon? "Spinning" an allowed gathering as a riot, in direct contradiction to one Harshbarger commission recommendation, the warden of Shirley Medium effectively raised the security classification level 3/4 to 5/6. Prisoner's are now allowed out of double bunk cells for only 1 and 1/2 hours per day. Imagine living with another person, locked in a space the size of your bathroom for 22 and 1/2 hours a day. We have included in our written testimony letters on this subject to various legislators, including Senator Barrios. We learned later that other wardens also effectively raised security levels in this manner. Nothing was done to rectify this disregard of just one recommendation paid for by Massachusetts taxpayers. We also believe that the added duress has contributed to prisoner suicide.

Public servants, including DOC staff and guards, take every opportunity to spin issues, including suicide, for their desired result. Even should we agree that Mr. Hayes' recommendations would solve the problem, which we do not, there would be more than enough available for programs by reallocating funds within the DOC.

With the loss of most programs and privileges during this "tough on crime" era, the DOC, using increasingly punative procedures now has near total control over prisoners. However, labor costs have gone up, as Massachusetts now has one guard for every two prisoners, more than every state but one. Meanwhile, due to the large numbers of non-violent drug war prisoners, the population is less dangerous. It is the violence done and allowed by the Commonwealth which has worsened.

Enforcement of increasingly restrictive policies prohibiting prisoners from suicide, which are the centerpiece of the Hayes report, will only replace symptoms of a failed system with others. More "suicide-resistant" Residential Treatment Units, increased observation of those on suicide watch and pre-service and in-service training time will do nothing to address the causes of prison suicides, some of which we have touched on above.

3. Some Recommendations and Conclusions

We do not believe the prison system can be reformed. Evidence based analysis has led us to conclude that locking people away from their communities causes more harm than it cures. Therefore, we are prison abolitionists.

While we are idealistic, we are also pragmatists. We realize that while we work to make the prison industrial complex unnecessary, we must ensure the safety and well being of those who were sent by society to prison as punishment, not for punishment. Therefore, we recommend a few practical steps to take us all in a new direction.

• We call for a 5 year moratorium on prison and jail construction and expansion in Massachusetts, and the establishment of a commission to study and recommend rights affirming changes in policy and practice to eradicate overcrowding, including ending mandatory minimums, as outlined in House bill 1723, the text of which you will find in our supporting documents.
  
  

• We call for citizen oversight of the Department of Correction, Parole Board, and county houses of correction to ensure accountability and transparency. There must be public oversight of the boards and committees that review disciplinary cases of prisoners or guards, classification of prisoners, sentencing calculations, and parole and probation.
  
  

• We call for the implementation of the rights affirming recommendations of the 2004 Harshbarger Commission Report, in particular the step-down model of classification to successively lower prison security levels and, and restoration of programs, including education, job training, and work release. We also want to see opportunities for civic engagement.
  
  

• We call for the immediate closure of Departmental Disciplinary Units, Secured Housing Units, and other forms of isolation and sensory deprivation, including supermax prisons. Under international standards for human rights, extended isolation is banned as a form of torture. (see Kammel and Kerness: "The Prison Inside the Prison").
  
  

• While we support some of the recommendations of the Hayes report for managing suicidal situations, we also criticize the report for viewing the problem of suicide with such a narrow lens, as indicated earlier.
  
  

• We reitierate, while a large percentage of prisoners enter prison disabled, many diagnosed "mentally ill", the prison system itself manufactures disability and mental illness. Therefore, in addition to eradicating the harmful "culture of cruelty" inside confining institutions, community harms causing disability must also be discerned and addressed. Yes, prisoners need better care. But so do the communities they come from. Addressing the harms of physical, psychological and sexual abuse by changing harmful relationship models, starting with those between government parties and the people, is essential. To remediate the current harms we must make significant investments in forming caring communities with safe living conditions, single payer healthcare, treatment on demand, individual and group therapy, where basic human needs, which are human rights, are met. We must reduce the over-reliance on medications, many of which also cause harm. With proper allocation of funds and proper citizen oversight, these remedies can become realities for prisoners and our communities. There is absolutely no need, if root causes are addressed, for building costly special residential treatment units or more jails and prisons.
  
  

• As our final and most important recommendation, we ask that you listen to the real experts on prison suicide, mental health, and safety—the prisoners and ex-prisoners themselves.

In closing, we repeat that our primary goal is to end the abuse of power exercised by the administrators, guards and staff in the DOC and the county "correctional" system. To end this abuse, we want meaningful consequences and effective remedies to put an end to continued rights violations. If all of us are serious about ending this epidemic, we must eradicate every policy and practice that engenders the hopelessness and despair driving prisoners and others to suicide.

[Closing poem by prisoner]

The Cemetery of the Living

The cemetery of the living, this I call the place;

Where my heart beats, my blood flows, yet it has no one to embrace.

Many have visited, not everyone survives;

It's not a horror story, and now I'll tell you why:

Time is hard, lonely, and unforgetful;

The dead rest in peace, but this rest is painful.

I had many by my side, upon entering these walls;

The ones I called my friends were the first who I lost.

My Baby's Mother took my daughter away, I ask why?

Every night I ask God to watch over her, as I cry.

Mom and dad, even they fell apart,

How much more can one take to the heart?

I live but I'm dead, and in this casket I lie.

In prison, the cemetery, I speak of today,

I guarantee my soul will never stay!!

C.T.

March 9, 2005

Bay State Correctional Center

Suicides, late releases among prisons' problems

May 2, 2007
By KEN MAGUIRE - Associated Press writer

BOSTON--The health care provider for Massachusetts prison inmates acknowledged Tuesday it failed to identify the suicidal history of an inmate when he was given a mental health screening before being sent to a segregation cell, where he killed himself.

There have been 10 suicides, including several in segregation cells, in the past 17 months in the state prison system, which is accused in a lawsuit of inadequate oversight of inmates with mental illnesses.

"There was a medical record that was not reviewed in its entirety, and in that medical record there was reference to suicidal gesturing .. in the past, which would have been information that would have been helpful," Patti Onorato, executive director of UMass Correctional Health, said of one inmate, not identified by name, who committed suicide.

The testimony came Tuesday at a Statehouse hearing examining problems within the Department of Correction, which oversees about 11,000 inmates in 17 facilities.

Gov. Deval Patrick's administration is replacing the DOC commissioner, and is reviewing policies ranging from sentencing to post-release, said Mary Elizabeth Heffernan, undersecretary for Criminal Justice.

"The status quo is unacceptable to this administration," she said. "There's a whole array of things that need to be looked at that we are absolutely having conversations about."

Patrick's proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 includes a $34 million increase for the department, most of which will pay for an expanded health care services contract.

DOC Associate Commissioner Veronica Madden said the expanded contract will allow for the creation of a behavioral management unit for maximum-security inmates; the establishment of a residential treatment unit for inmates with mental illnesses; and weeknight and weekend coverage by mental health professionals.

Those changes should reduce the number of suicide attempts, she said.

In addition, a new policy requires that every inmate recommended for segregation--because of violent behavior in the general population--will be screened "to determine if their mental illness impacts segregation.

Fixing the system will be among the priorities for the next department commissioner. The Patrick administration ousted Commissioner Kathleen Dennehy, and named her deputy, James Bender, as acting commissioner. Dennehy has taken a job with the Bristol County sheriff's department.

A federal lawsuit filed in March claims Massachusetts inmates with mental illnesses get inadequate oversight, contributing to an increase in suicide attempts.

The latest suicide was Jarred Aranda, a 27-year-old who was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital. He hung himself in a shower room in March.

That death was the third suicide in Massachusetts state prisons this year, after seven last year. Those are up from one suicide in 2004 and four in 2005.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the Disability Law Center Inc. claims one-quarter of the 11,000 inmates in the state prison system are mentally ill, and criticizes the DOC for keeping hundreds of inmates in isolation for too long.

The state's inmate suicide rate was about 27 per 100,000 inmates during the 10-year-period that ended in 2006, according to a state-commissioned report issued in February. That was nearly twice the rate nationally, according to data for 2002, the report said.

That's not the only problem. The DOC is overhauling the system it uses for tracking sentences following revelations that 14 inmates were confined even after their sentences had been completed.

The department blamed the errors on the complexity of cou! rt decis ions governing the terms of sentences, and refused to say whether any employees had been fired or otherwise disciplined because of the errors, The Boston Globe reported.