Sheriff Anthony Wickersham stated he is 100 percent satisfied with how his officers handled a recent situation in his jail.  Although he concedes during an interview that a hospital is located about three minutes away, he is also of the opinion that the baby born on a jail cell floor came too fast.  He goes on to talk about how nice it would be to have a medical team on hand, but adds that the taxpayers would have to pay for that.  He also says he is not going to second guess the decisions of his staff.

I am.

Jessica Preston was pulled over for driving on a suspended license.  She was given a court date five days later and ordered to pay a $10,000 cash bond, but she couldn’t afford it, so she was to stay in jail until she could see the judge.   If she had been wealthy, she would not have been in the jail.  But, she wasn’t wealthy, so in the jail she stayed.

Ms. Preston was eight months pregnant at the time she was jailed.  She had delivered her first baby via an emergency C-section and was scheduled to deliver Elijha the same way for health reasons.

It was while she was at the jail that Jessica’s contractions began.   Her baby was coming a month early, she was behind bars, and she was experiencing the pain of labor.

At 7 in the morning, she sought medical attention and made the staff aware she was having her baby.  They didn’t allow her to go to a hospital, but instead sent her back to her cell.

Four and half hours later, at 11:30, she again sought medical assistance, letting staff know she was having a baby.  Again, Jessica was sent back to a jail cell.

At 1:00 in the afternoon she tried again, this time with blood running down her leg.  Rather than call an ambulance, the staff sent her back to her cell.

Elijha was born at 2:45 that day.   Almost two hours after the last attempt Jessica made to get help.

The Sherriff may want to cloud the issues with talk about taxpayers needing to pay for medical staff, budgets, etc, but by doing so, he is just making it all the more apparent how far many of those employed in corrections will go to cover for each other’s poor treatment of inmates.

When a pregnant woman starts to have a baby, you help her.  It’s that simple.  Wickersham said they didn’t have time – they had time.  They had well over seven hours to get that woman to a hospital.  Seven hours.  It takes less than a minute to call an ambulance.

In the spectrum of morally right and wrong – which is worse?  Driving on a suspended license, or not offering assistance to a young woman who is in labor for over seven hours and endangering the life of a premature baby?  Which leads to one more question.  Which is worse – not allowing a woman access to a doctor when she goes into labor a month early, or trying to defend the inexcusable lack of compassion and professionalism that led to a child being born on a jail cell floor?

REFERENCES

Hutchinson, Kevin Dietz Derick. “Macomb County Sheriff Stands by Staff after Woman Forced to Give Birth in Jail Cell.” WDIV. N.p., 10 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.

Kevin Dietz, Frank McGeorge, Derick Hutchinson. “Major Health Risks for Woman Who Delivered Baby on Cell Floor at Macomb County Jail.” WDIV. N.p., 07 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.

Schladebeck, Jessica. “Pregnant Woman Forced to Deliver Baby on Jail Cell Floor.”NY Daily News. N.p., 07 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.

The word indifferent was used in an article I read to describe the ‘deadliest’ jail in my state. I thought it was an adequate word at first. I have written about the death of Jamycheal Mitchell at that same jail, and the ‘indifference’ in that instance was hard to ignore. It was blatant. In that case, a young man with a mental condition was allowed to die of ‘wasting’. I, as a layman, would call that starving. There was never any acknowledgement by the facility of wrongdoing in that case, nor remorse.

After careful consideration, I have changed my mind. The word ‘indifferent’ is too kind. It would not be a sufficiently strong enough word if it were my 24 year old son who had wasted away. I would probably use words more along the lines of incompetent. Knowing me, if it were my son, I would call his death ‘criminal’. In Mitchell’s case, the jail investigated itself and found its officers and staff guilty of no wrongdoing.

Another man died in that same jail not too long after Jamycheal. Henry Clay Stewart was 60 years old when he passed away. Mr. Stewart was at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail because of an upcoming trial for allegedly violating the terms of his release on a shoplifting conviction.

Mr. Stewart was not sentenced to life or ten years or even one. He was simply awaiting trial. While at the jail, Henry Stewart became ill. He repeatedly requested help. Some might say he begged for help, with words like, “I keep asking to go to the emergency room,” and “I need emergency assistance right away.” He informed employees that he couldn’t hold down his food or water.   More concerning than that, he reported to them that he had blacked out twice in less than 24 hours. Mr. Stewart needed help.

If you were to believe another inmate’s statements, Stewart had also been coughing up blood for weeks, and had lost weight.   Staff determined that Mr. Stewart’s August 4^th plea for help, which wasn’t his first, was ‘not an emergency’.

Two days later, Stewart was found dead. The medical examiner’s office listed Stewart’s death as ‘perforated gastric ulcer due to chronic lymphocytic gastritis, H. Pylori positive’.

Following the death of Henry Clay Stewart, Lt. Col. Eugene Taylor III, the jail’s assistant superintendent said, as he did after Jamycheal’s death, the jail did not plan to change any of its policies, because its investigation found that none had been violated.

The jail’s previous superintendent, David L. Simons, was said to have stated that the death ‘was a natural death’ and there was ‘nothing out of the ordinary’.

Indifference is not strong enough a word in my opinion. The federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act entitles inmates to medical and mental health care.

‘Indifference’ would be a lack of sympathy or caring. The corrections profession has become one of indifference. This case, and the countless like it, is an indication it has gone beyond indifference. By not acknowledging the problem and striving to correct the indifferent system we have, the trend will continue to surpass indifference. It will continue to grow more incompetent, and eventually criminal. Kindness and compassion are of vital importance to any successful relationship or system, and those are qualities that don’t exist in our current Criminal Justice System.

REFERENCES

Dujardin, Peter. “Regional Jail Inmate Died of Perforated Ulcer, Medical Examiner Says.”  Daily Press. N.p., 04 Oct. 2016. Web. 01 Nov. 2016.       

Kleiner, Sarah, and K. Burnell Evans. “Hampton Roads Regional Jail Is Deadliest in the Virginia for Inmates.” Richmond Times-Dispatch. N.p., 03 Sept. 2016. Web. 01 Nov. 2016.

I was talking to someone today about prison conditions. They said to me, “People have a choice. You aren’t in there. I’m not in there. They have a choice.” Yes. We all have choices to make. I choose to treat all people with decency. I choose to advocate for people that no longer have a voice. That is my choice.  I am a believer in Jesus.  I read something today that spoke so loudly to me.  If Jesus were on the earth today, we would surely see Him visiting prison.  There is no doubt in my mind.

People in prison are extremely vulnerable. They are vulnerable because they have been written off.   Friends of mine advocate for animals and children, and those causes are so easy to get behind and win support for. Prisoners – not so much. It’s easier to forget them all than to think that maybe it was a one time mistake, or a wrongful conviction, or a mental illness, or a case of addiction. The reasons no longer matter when you have the label ‘prisoner’, ‘inmate’, ‘felon’.

Christian Corde’s mother knows how vulnerable someone can be in prison. She says her son broke his foot in the rec yard at Lawton Correctional Facility in Oklahoma.   He was working out at the time of the injury. The incident occurred on August 4^th, 2016. Christian’s mom says he now has a displaced 3^rd metatarsal fracture. From what she describes, scar tissue has built up around the displaced bone, due to a delay in surgery, and the bone is now trying to make its way outward, causing fracture blisters.  I wrote to the prison to ask why Christian was not receiving medical care, but no one has yet responded to me.

There is a vulnerability behind prison walls that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. Meals are sometimes rejected by the local stray cats. If you are lucky enough to have a stash of food in your cell, you might have to chase away a rat who comes to try and snatch it away. There is crime and violence that isn’t just committed by the people locked behind the bars. Jailers police themselves, and are rarely held accountable for their actions.

There isn’t a differentiation between the person who was wrongly accused, or the woman who killed the man who was raping her. There isn’t a ‘nicer’ set up for those people than the mass murderer. Prison is prison. The people who live there are at the mercy of staff. The people who work in corrections and the people who live in prison both know what that means. I never intended any of my articles to bash a profession, but to deal in reality, we have to acknowledge there is corruption within the corrections profession.

I recently heard a story from a man who was in a prison in Georgia. He’d broken his tooth on a chicken bone.   I can say, without a doubt, I wouldn’t want to break a tooth in a prison. As this man sat in the dental chair, his female dentist angrily banged on his teeth. She wrote in the man’s file, ‘He thinks he’s entitled’. Then she told him he was OK to leave. He then showed her his broken tooth, she gave him a temporary filling, and sent him on his way.

There is a prison in Virginia that has earned the title of having the highest death rate in the state among inmates. It is the Hampton Roads Regional Jail. A man died there last month. His name was Henry. He was sixty years old. He put in a written request for emergency medical attention. His request described blacking out and not being able to hold down food or water. Henry Steward was dead two days later. That just happened a couple weeks ago. I have already written a story on this blog about a young man who died of ‘wasting’ while he was in the same jail last year.

I understand my friend’s opinion that we all have choices and that a person who is in prison got themselves there. I understand that a lot of people feel that way. I expect more from myself. Excusing our own lack of compassion with blanket comments like, ‘they had a choice’, is a cop out. Just build the wall higher, don’t look in, and don’t worry about how people are treated. They had a choice. Yes, I expect more from myself.

One man put it this way about how he was treated in a GA prison. “We were like roaches to them.” He was probably right. People in prison are not bulletproof. They are more vulnerable than most people want to acknowledge.

The first time I saw photos from inside an Alabama prison, I remember thinking, ‘that can’t be here’. I would have thought it was a third world country. If animals were housed in those conditions, rescue organizations would be lining up to get them into better homes.

The visual left me thinking it was like a warehouse for humans. People piled in with very little space, swatting at flies and passing one more hot day in a sad, overcrowded, incredibly lonely place. Just like dirty laundry shoved in a closet and the door pushed shut, human beings are being hidden out of site in deplorable conditions, watched over by skeleton staffs, that often commit crimes of their own.   Unfortunately, a good number of C.O.’s receive tax funded salaries and benefits to spend their days at the same place, while blackmailing, smuggling in contraband, and trading items for sex, just to name a few of the things that go on.

Disregard for common decency behind the fences and cinderblock walls is a way of life.  Staff protect their own. They police themselves. They don’t answer to secret shoppers. There is no accountability system in place that is going to bring about change. There are honest, decent people who work in corrections, but not enough of them to change the system.

People in prison have told me that they don’t play sports because a simple injury can be a death sentence. Treatment, if given at all, is often given late and not up to the standard of care that a person should receive. People that don’t have to, die from easily treatable conditions that are ignored.   People suffer.

It get’s hot in the south. Prison wasn’t meant to be a vacation. It wasn’t meant to be hell either. In Alabama, prisons are operating at nearly 200 percent over what they were intended to. It’s scorching, and there is no air conditioning. People are piled in on top of each other in overheated conditions.

The staff is too shorthanded to maintain adequate security, leaving prisoners in fear. It isn’t safe for anyone. If a prisoner goes in a nonviolent offender, it’s very possible he learns violence while incarcerated. He surely learns about isolation and suffering.

I would call the Alabama prison system a tremendous failure and a disgrace to humanity. The jailers, in too many cases, abuse their power and only exasperate the growing resentment that is building behind the walls. Resentment isn’t the only thing growing in there. If people could see through the walls, they would see loneliness, desperation, fear, discomfort, ailing health, lack of nutrition, and a breeding ground for future crime.

When people think of prison, they don’t always think of the big picture. I was recently talking to a young man who was incarcerated as a teenager for a nonviolent crime. He has been in for nearly ten years and has over thirty to go. I asked him why he was living in a level four security prison. He told me it was because of the length of his sentence. So, essentially, a nonviolent child grew up in a level four security environment, because of the heartless length of his sentence, not because of his behavior. That’s not justice.

All prisons are not created equal. Sentences vary based on economic resources, connections, and even race. The prison system in our country is in crisis, and the system in Alabama is deplorable.

REFERENCES

 Cstephens@al.com, Challen Stephens |. “Averting Its Eyes, Alabama Lets Prisons Sink into Despair.” AL.com. N.p., 22 June 2014. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.                          

Snell, Rashad. “More Prisoners Across Alabama Join Prison Strike – Alabama News.” Alabama News. N.p., 11 May 2016. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.