Drug addiction isn’t pretty. It’s easier for people to deny its existence than to try and wrap their heads around it. I’ve given it a little thought today. I tried to imagine the struggle. I think it may feel something like being in dark hole with no walls in sight to climb your way out. What makes seemingly young, healthy people keep falling deeper into the hole? Is it a cycle of self-loathing? Unhappiness with one’s own life has someone looking to something for happiness, but once the chemicals take hold, do they hate themselves a little more each time they succumb, because they are faced with their own weakness? Over and over, digging deeper and deeper, and the deeper they go, the further they find themselves from their ability to find happiness within themselves?
I don’t think I’ll figure it out. I’m grateful I’ve never fought the battle. I’ve seen loved ones go through it though. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone fully conquer it. My father was an alcoholic, and he never conquered his addiction. I’ve loved and known others, with their various poisons. I’ve seen what they do in their darkness. They’ve stolen from loved ones in moments of weakness, only to realize it when clarity returns. The result only makes them feel further isolated and alone, having betrayed the ones they love.
Addiction is pain, plain and simple. In its simplest explanation, that’s what it is. I read about Rayvell Finch today. He was an addict, the same as those I have known and loved. He hadn’t been in trouble for a while. Just a victim of his own disease. Hurting himself, but not violent with anybody else. He was with a friend one day in Louisiana, while visiting his aunt and grandmother. The two were sitting on the steps of an abandoned house right next door.
There was a police officer and DEA agent patrolling the area to target violent crime that day. They saw Rayvell and his friend, and arrested him for trespassing. Rayvell was a heroin addict. The officers found eight aluminum foil packets in his sock. They tested positive for the drug.
At the age of 23, Rayvell Finch had no record of any violence. A few years earlier he had been convicted of possession of stolen property worth over $500, followed a year later by being charged with possession with intent to distribute 24 rocks of crack cocaine. This was Rayvell’s third strike.
That was in 1997, nearly twenty years ago. Rayvell was sentenced to spend the rest of his natural life behind bars. In other words, the door was shut, the key thrown away, and no one ever has to see him again. No possibility of parole. That’s one way to deal with addiction.
Are we so shallow that we have become a society that locks away the weak and damaged till they die, so we don’t have to see them? Rayvell paid for his previous crimes. Because he was an addict, and had his drugs in his sock that day, Rayvell was sentenced to spend the rest of his days on earth in prison, without love or family around him, until he dies alone. I don’t know the law, and I don’t know the words they used to justify it, but that is the reality of the outcome.
RESOURCES:
Wishon, Jennifer. “Nation of Criminals: Three Strikes on the Way Out.” N.p., n.d. Web.
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 4th, 2016. Christian’s mom says he now has a displaced 3rd 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.
Was Travion Blount sentenced to six life sentences plus 118 years because he killed someone? No. In my opinion, he was given six life sentences because he dared to go to trial. Travion did not accept a plea. If our justice system was meant to be ‘just’, Travion would not have received six life sentences, plus over 100 years more than the other two participants in the same crime. The other two each pled guilty and did not go to trial. One received ten years and the other received thirteen years.
Travion was involved in an armed robbery with two of his friends. He was the youngest of the three, at fifteen. The older boys were eighteen years old, and one of them struck a victim in the head. Otherwise, no one was injured in the crime.
All in a day’s work, a judge handed down six life sentences plus 118 years. People are fighting for Travion, but he still sits in prison. The robbery took place nearly ten years ago, in September, 2006. As of today, his release date is listed as November 13, 2043. I suppose that is an improvement from six life sentences plus 118 years, but it isn’t just.
From the first time I contacted Travion, he has never failed to ask me how I am doing. He asks me about my life and family. He tells me about his. He tells me about classes and programs he is trying to take or has taken. He has said more than once, he tries to stay ‘out the way’. He says he’s waiting, but it’ll work out. He doesn’t get to see his family much, not because they don’t want to see him, but because the state placed him in a prison on the other side of the state from them. Travelling that far is not only a challenge, it is also very expensive. In spite of that, Travion stays positive in the face of all that is negative.
Usually, I only read of support for Travion, but every now and then I will read an ugly comment about crime and ‘doing the time’. When I read those, I have to wonder how someone gets to a place in life where they feel there is no place for mercy in this world. Travion was only a kid when he was told there would be no second chance for him. His life was over. Yet, every letter I get from him includes, ‘how’s your family?’ or ‘how are you?’ He tells me things will work out. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t ask for anything. He thanks me for caring. If I could talk to the man who sentenced him to six life sentences plus 118 years, I would have to simply ask him, ‘why?’
To say there is little accountability in corrections is probably an understatement. This country locks up a lot of people – more than any other country in the world. With those numbers, a lack of accountability in the corrections profession is ultimately going to be a problem. The smoke and mirrors used to deflect attention are getting a little old. The friends and family of those people behind bars are joining their voices together and, hopefully, where they were once individual whispers, they can all join together and become a roar. That’s my hope.
There is a long road ahead determining how we can better rehabilitate people. Treating them all like garbage is not working though. That is what is happening. The person I am writing about today has a name. He is a ‘person’. Someone recently corrected me when I used different terminology. They are ‘people’ in prison. She was absolutely correct. They are not a number, or inmate, etc. They are people.
Jamycheal Mitchell is this boy’s name. I have written about him before. He was arrested in April of 2015 for stealing $5 worth of snacks. He suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And – that is the correct word – ‘suffered’. Mental illness is an illness. It is a condition that no one would ‘choose’ for themselves. The boy deserved compassion, understanding and care for that reason alone – the fact that he ‘suffered’ from mental illness.
The boy who suffered from an illness and stole five dollars worth of junk food, was placed in jail. That in itself does not make any sense. But, the mentally ill are often kept in jails and prisons in this country, so, unfortunately, that is not unusual.
That is where all logic seems to end. I have searched for every article and piece of material I can find about Jamycheal. I was hoping I could find a public statement by the jail expressing sympathy for his family after he died in their care. Yes, he died in jail. I have searched and printed and read everything I can find. I have found absolutely nothing expressing sympathy. I will tell you what I have found.
The system we have set up to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, isn’t accountable for anything it does. It doesn’t even come close to passing the standards of decency it holds the people that it imprisons to. That is what I have found.
After Jamycheal’s arrest, a judge ordered him to be sent to a hospital. Due to ‘clerical errors’ his name was not on the list of people waiting for beds at Eastern State Hospital. So he sat in jail. Anyone familiar with the environment in jail knows that it is not a place to treat a mentally ill person. It simply is not. Nothing good can come from putting a person that suffers from mental illness into a jail cell. There are not a lot of requirements needed to get a job in corrections, and the staff is certainly not capable of caring for the mentally ill, although we could hope that some of them may be capable of compassion.
So, ‘clerical errors’ made by an ‘overwhelmed’ employee had him sitting indefinitely. On July 31 a jail employee contacted the Portsmouth Department of Behavioral Healthcare Services, requesting an evaluation of Jamycheal, but the evaluation did not happen. On August 19, 2015, Jamycheal was dead. He had lost over 34 pounds in the care of the jail over those few months and died of ‘wasting’.
One article I read stated that he was ‘overlooked and forgotten’. That is too forgiving and gives the jail undue credit in my opinion. He wasn’t ‘forgotten’. If you can see him, how can you forget him? He wasn’t misplaced. Employees saw him every day. Absolutely nothing was done. If they had seen a dog chained to a post out front and walked by it every single day as it withered away, could we say they ‘overlooked’ the dog and ‘forgot’ him? The fact is, they looked at him and they did not ‘forget’ he was there.
The article also indicated that there was an employee hired to monitor people waiting for state hospital beds. The article said that the employee had not met with Mitchell the entire four months that he was in jail.
For the sake of argument, I am going to discount a majority of the things that have been reported about the Hampton Roads Regional Jail’s care of Jamycheal. I am going to make many assumptions to give weight to the Jail’s claim that an internal audit found no responsibility in this death.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there is not one valid statement made by the other people detained in the jail at the time. There have been statements made and letters written by them that I will pretend I haven’t read.
Let’s assume that Mitchell was not kicked in the knees to get him to sit down, when he was standing naked against the wall outside his cell, while it was being cleaned.
Let’s assume he didn’t live naked with no pillow, blanket, cup, or water to flush his toilet.
Let’s assume that all his meals were given to him.
Let’s assume that his cell didn’t smell so bad that it was hard to walk past without gagging.
Let’s assume that all claims by fellow people held in the jail who claim to have witnessed abuse are all lies. I don’t see how it would benefit them to testify against the correctional staff who are housing them, but let’s assume they are all lying. In my experience, the people that I know on both sides of corrections know that you need to be careful when complaining about staff, as you often pay the price. But – for the sake of argument, let’s assume these people are all lying.
With all of those assumptions, here are the highlights of a statement issued by The Hampton Roads Regional Jail on June 24, 2016. That is a couple months shy of a year after Mitchell passed away. In the statement, the Jail says it notified the police immediately of Jamycheal’s death. They claim to have provided the police with all of the files they requested. The police found that there was no evidence of a crime. What strikes me with that is – the party being investigated provided the evidence the police reviewed. We wouldn’t have any crime if we were all permitted to submit the evidence to be reviewed in investigations into wrongdoing. But, again, let’s overlook that.
The statement says that the scene was preserved and photographed. I have to wonder who took the photographs. The statement says that Hampton Roads Regional Jail’s investigation into this case revealed no breach of Hampton Roads Regional Jail’s policies or procedures, and no criminal action or negligence by Hampton Roads Regional Jail staff. Basically, what that says is, the jail’s investigation into itself reveals no wrongdoing. Let’s also overlook just how ridiculous that is.
The statement says that Hampton Roads Regional Jail has done an investigation into the claims by ‘inmates’ that the jail acted improperly towards Jamycheal and the jail has found all of those complaints unsubstantiated. So, what we are hearing here is, jail employees looked into the inmates’ complaints of abuse. Jail employees then determined that the inmates accusing jail employees of misconduct are lying. I can’t decide what part of that is stranger – the fact that the employees claim that no one’s complaints are valid or that the very staff the inmates were accusing of wrongdoing were the very people who questioned them.
In its statement, the Hampton Roads Regional Jail says that it contracts with an outside company to provide medical and mental health care and treatment to ‘inmates’. That means – you guessed it – Hampton Roads Regional Jail has no control over when Mr. Mitchell was to be evaluated by Eastern State Hospital and also implies his medical care was not their responsibility. This, in my opinion, is a pathetic attempt at shoving blame away. If the jail hired the company, they are responsible for ensuring that the people they are housing are being treated properly by that company. I will, for the sake of argument, say that I agree with this disgraceful shirking of responsibility, even though I don’t.
Hampton Roads Regional Jail also is proud to say that a few weeks before his death, Mr. Mitchell went to the hospital for treatment because his legs were swollen. The jail quotes the hospital as recording that Mr. Mitchell was “well developed and well nourished”. This I find interesting, since an exam of the body revealed he died of ‘wasting’. Not only wasting, but he lost more than 10 percent of his body weight while he was there. Trying to imply that the young man was the picture of health, I would have thought would have been too low, but I guess not in the case of Hampton Roads Regional Jail.
Hampton Roads Regional Jail stated that it offered Mr. Mitchell 297 meals and he refused three of those. They also claim he was seen by medical and mental healthcare providers on 70 different occasions. What I have to say to that is – how can professionals looked at him on seventy occasions and not have raised hell to get him help? But that’s just me.
In closing, the statement issued by Hampton Roads Regional Jail says, “We do not intend to try this case in the press, but we are confident that the care and treatment we provide to all our inmates is appropriate and meets or exceeds both Virginia and National Standards.” I simply must say that I am biting my tongue reading that paragraph. For the love of God, what does that say about Virginia and National Standards?
I have read everything I can find on this. And – as I stated throughout – I am going to assume everything that the jail claims is true. There is still something missing though. I have not been able to find it. There is not one single word of remorse. Not one single acknowledgement that this kid died in their care and maybe they need to look at themselves a little closer. Not one single word to the family. He died. He wasted away in front of your eyes and on your floor. Jamycheal Mitchell was a person. Had a person starved to death locked in a room in my home, I would be in jail. Where is the accountability?
REFERENCES
Earley, Pete. “VA. NAMI, Former IG, Local NAACP Call For Fed Probe Of Mentally Ill Prisoner’s Death From Starvation In Virginia – Pete Earley.” Pete Earley. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Aug. 2016.
Kleiner21, Sarah. “Report: Clerical Errors Preceded Death of Va. Man Jailed for Stealing Junk Food.” Richmond Times-Dispatch. N.p., 21 Mar. 2016. Web. 06 Aug. 2016.
LeBlanc, Deana. “Only On 10: Inmate Who Found Jamycheal Mitchell Dead Speaks out.” WAVYTV. N.p., 13 May 2016. Web. 06 Aug. 2016.
LeBlanc, Deanna. “Sheriff Responds after Inmates in Jamycheal Mitchell Lawsuit Claim Intimidation by Jail Staff.” WAVYTV. N.p., 22 June 2016. Web. 06 Aug. 2016.
Satchell, Emily. “Hampton Roads Regional Jail Releases Details on Jamycheal Mitchell’s Death.” WAVYTV. N.p., 24 June 2016. Web. 06 Aug. 2016.
Satchell, Emily. “State Police Open Criminal Investigation into Jamycheal Mitchell’s Death.” WAVYTV. N.p., 22 June 2016. Web. 06 Aug. 2016.
There is a family in Virginia whose last memories of their son and brother are in a jail’s visitation room. Lutalo Octave was feeling more like himself that day. Enough like himself that he was processing the things he had done to land himself in jail. Lutalo Octave was charged with arson for burning his family’s house down. No one was in the home at the time. It was while he was in jail that he was diagnosed with Schizophreniform, a mental disorder. The family’s story was chronicled in the Richmond Times Dispatch.
Lutalo wasn’t violent. The photo of him in the paper is angelic, and from all accounts I have read, he was a sweet, thoughtful kid who liked video games, played a tuba and was a lifeguard. He wasn’t hurtful. He could have been my boy. He could have been the boy next door. He could have had a future. Life had different things in store for him though.
Something went a little wrong in Lutalo’s mind. It wasn’t a choice, no more than someone chooses to get cancer. He went off to college and a wire got crossed somewhere in his brain. I suppose no one will ever know the trigger. It could have been destined from birth, or maybe there was some sort of environmental factor. All that is known is that Lutalo changed. I always heard that if you raise your kids right, they will find their way back if they veer off course. Lutalo didn’t have a choice to find his way back. He had an illness. An illness that had him battling within his own head.
It’s not easy to get help if your adult child has a mental illness in this country. Often times there is nothing you can do once they turn eighteen, unless they harm themselves or others. You’re helpless. You watch. You try to make sense of it. You struggle with searching for ways to help. You try to piece together logical solutions to a problem that doesn’t follow a logical pattern. It’s like fighting a fire with a water pistol, but the hardest part is that the fire is trying to engulf your kid.
Lutalo left college. He lost his job. He was not acting himself, not because he wanted to be someone else, rather because his mind wasn’t working properly. His family could only watch in frustration. Forcing someone with a mental illness to seek help, is often a losing battle. They can’t see what you see. They don’t recognize their own illness. You wouldn’t lay a newborn baby in the arms of a mentally ill person, because they aren’t always capable of handling the responsibility. It isn’t that they wish to harm anyone. They are no more capable of making healthy choices for themselves than they would be for a baby. But our system doesn’t take into account that an eighteenth birthday doesn’t cure mental illness. You can’t force help on a mentally ill adult, unless they have already harmed someone. So, Lutalo’s family could only watch.
Lutalo’s illness sometimes showed up in the form of fire starting. Again, his family was unable to get anyone to help. Then he burned the house down. Lutalo was charged with arson and taken to jail. The tender hearted, book reading, video playing musician was taken into custody. He wasn’t taken to a hospital or a mental health facility. He was taken to jail. And, although the mom in me knows that Lutalo’s parents knew he didn’t belong in jail, I would imagine that, for a moment, they were able to breath, and think that he was in a safe place until they could get him moved to a treatment facility. That is what I would have been thinking, if I had never been exposed to our criminal justice system.
Lutalo’s illness may not have been curable, but it was treatable. Lutalo was diagnosed with schizophreniform disorder while at the jail. He was also placed on suicide watch after saying he had nothing to live for.
I have learned all my life that if you have something that belongs to someone else, you take better care of it than you would your own. I would like to think that goes for human beings as well. Lutalo was in the care of a jail. They took him into custody for a crime committed because of an illness that he would never have chosen to have. No one would choose schizophrenia.
Lutalo ended up taking his life in a jail cell. He was by himself. There was a metal shelf on the wall in his cell. He was supplied with a sheet. There was a broken camera in the room. There was also a functioning camera that could record only part of the room. I have to wonder if the person who was supposed to be monitoring the cameras had any concerns that one of the devices was not working. I would think that a camera meant to monitor someone on suicide watch should be operating. If it were my child, I would want it working.
Excuses can be made. Arguments can be said that there are staffing issues or funding issues. Excuses and arguments are why our criminal justice system is what it is today. It’s time to say it’s broken. It needs to be fixed. The time for excuses and arguments has passed. The system needs to be fixed, and it needs compassion to be one of its cornerstones. When the sun goes down, Lutalo’s family has to deal with the memories of his sweet face. They have to relive the last day they saw him when he was just their lost son and brother, wanting so desperately to come home with them. They had to watch him walk away from them at that visitation. They have to relive that over and over. That kind of pain leaves no room for excuses and arguments.
REFERENCES
Kleiner, Sarah, and Burnell Evans. “Henrico County Family Watches Helplessly as Ambitious Teenager Spirals into Darkness.” Richmond Times-Dispatch. N.p., 15 July 2016. Web. 31 July 2016.
Kleiner, Sarah, and Burnell Evans. “Part 2: Mentally Ill Man Threatens Suicide, Then given a Cell with a Sheet and a Shelf.” Richmond Times-Dispatch. N.p., 15 July 2016. Web. 31 July 2016.
The number of incarcerated in our country points to a problem on a grand scale. What’s harder to grasp than the numbers, is the reality that every single one of them is a person, a human being with a heart and soul. The tough on crime, tough on drugs policies, have led to nonviolent people living and dying behind bars. They are housed by the Department of Corrections within the states, or on a federal level. The name implies that something is being corrected, or fixed. It would make sense that encouraging inmates to maintain relationships with people who care about them on the outside would go hand in hand with that correction. It would make sense to help offenders remember what they have to look forward to on the outside. It would make sense to try and keep them from tumbling down the well of depression that so many fall into.
Inmates need visits from people who care about them. It’s often not a year behind bars. Or two. Or even five. Think about living five years without looking into the eyes of a loved one. Or simply the eyes of someone you trust. Five years looking over your shoulder. Five years without holding a hand. If it is the intent to ‘correct’ behavior, stable, supportive relationships should be encouraged. Keeping a foot in the world that an inmate is going back to one day, just makes sense. It’s shortsighted and ignorant to think otherwise. There is no argument to be made that someone feeling alone, uncared for, and forgotten will lead to improved behavior. Love heals. Compassion and touch trump disrespect and solitude.
Whether it be a son or sister, father or friend, inmates need the touch of a hand and words of encouragement. This is not about the crime, because often times they aren’t violent. Often times the punishment is overzealous. What I normally write about are the sentences that make no sense. That’s not what this is about. This is about compassion. Having a heart for the suffering, depression, and loneliness of people that are often forgotten behind walls, hidden from our view, so we don’t have to acknowledge they exist.
I visit prison. I have been doing it for a while. I only recently realized just how I have come to feel about the experience though. I was walking up the steps to the door, when it occurred to me just how tense I was. I felt my defenses going up and mentally preparing myself for whatever employee I might face on the other side. Would it be one that was going to ‘find’ something to send me away for, because that appeared to be the usual game they played? Or maybe it would be the pleasant one, who I rarely saw, that followed the rules, but would say, “Have a nice visit.” Or, more likely than not, it would be the one that looked at you with contempt and seemed to thrive on making other people feel small. It also occurred to me that, if this was how these tax paid employees behaved in front of the public, could they possibly be even more disrespectful when there were no eyes watching them? Of course they are. An individual that has no respect for someone who is smiling at them, not a criminal and trying desperately to get their approval for a visit with their loved one, is not going to respect people who are at their mercy behind solid brick walls. Logic tells us that.
I can’t count the number of times I have visited prison. I have come to expect disrespect. I have come to expect ugly. There isn’t a pretty word for it. The reality is, a smile is rare. I have been smiled at by a couple employees behind the desk. I remember their faces, and I miss them terribly, because I rarely see them. I’m not sure why the people who are responsible for checking us in don’t feel anything for the family members coming to see their loved ones. I have seen people travel to the prison from other countries. I have seen people who have driven for over ten hours, who can’t afford a hotel and have to get in their car and drive home when the visit is over. I have seen elderly parents, mothers with infants, and young children at an age when they find the entire process overwhelming. Nobody is expecting therapy or emotional support, but would it be so hard to dig deep and simply be kind. A little kindness could go so very far. Kindness travels so much further than ugly.
The disrespect and ugly attitudes aren’t all that you might run into when trying to visit a loved one in prison though. There are rules when you visit, and there should be. The rules are meant to protect the prisoners and the employees. The rules aren’t always used that way though. Often times, heading into a visit, the rules are used to toy with the inmates and their visitor. I won’t even argue some points. I have seen babies – younger than one year old – sent away with the wrong color clothing, or no sleeves. Maybe there is a logic to that. I suppose that having a set of rules that can’t be adjusted is okay in some situations. I suppose that it is fair to say that if we can’t train and educate employees well enough to know when their judgment can come into play, then it is okay to have rules that can’t be bent. I am not sure how a three month old wearing a solid khaki onesie or a sleeveless tee could threaten anything, but, for the sake of argument, let’s accept that rules can’t be bent.
Bending the rules is one thing, but using the rules to torment people is another. I was sitting on a visit once, when I noticed ants crawling all over the person I had come to visit. Ants in the visiting room are common, and apparently we had gotten in their path. After knocking off as many as we could, we asked if we could move seats. The answer was no. In a room with less than half of the seats filled, we could not change seats. That has happened to me on more than one visit. It would be too kind to allow us to move a couple empty seats over.
There are windows in the visiting room where I go. I have seen elderly visitors in seats with the sun blinding them, when they could easily move over a couple chairs and not have that problem, but they are not allowed to.
Where I visit, you are made to wait in a brick building with no air conditioning and call on a telephone to the lobby. You are not allowed to proceed to the lobby until they give you permission over the phone. That is the system they have set up, and I am happy to follow those rules. More than once though, I have been told over the phone to proceed up to the building, and when I have arrived I have been scolded and treated as if I had broken the rules, and was not sent up. There is one individual officer that seems very good at treating you as if you don’t deserve to be in the same room as her, and she has scolded me for showing up a few times. It is very odd, because in the year I was visiting prior to her sitting at the desk, I was never told to come up and then scolded when I did. But, apparently, this is the way that this officer likes to do things.
On another visit, I had been called up to the lobby, and on my way there, I passed a woman coming out. I had seen this woman on previous visits, and I knew she was familiar with the rules. She was covered from her ankles to her neck. Not a bit of cleavage and her dress hit her ankles. I would actually say she was dressed very conservatively. As she headed away, she told me they were going to turn me away. She said that they had turned her away. She was told the shape of her neckline was not allowed. It was a scoop neck. I was wearing a dress that also had the same neckline. Both of our necklines fell at least one and a half inches above cleavage, and our shoulders were not exposed in any way. I thought that she was surely wrong. I didn’t bring a change of clothes that day, because I was certain that what I was wearing followed all the rules. I had been visiting for over a year. I walked into the lobby and saw the officer that liked to scold me. She looked at me and said, ‘That is see through’. I knew I was dressed just fine, and had left home with my mother and children telling me I looked pretty. This officer wasn’t able to determine there was something wrong with my dress just by looking at me though. She told me to stand up against the glass door, with the sun blazing through the glass behind me, and said, ‘Yep, it’s see through. You can’t come in’. I went to the mall and bought another outfit. Not because I could afford it, because I couldn’t. But I couldn’t let my friend sit in that place, surrounded by people who don’t care about him and treat him like that woman treated me, without telling him hello and sharing a laugh before I made the hour long drive home.
My stories aren’t unusual. I have learned to not react to officers staring at you. I have learned that I need to always bring back up clothing in my car. I have learned that you don’t complain, because it will come back to haunt you on the next visit, or the person you came to visit. I have learned to expect disrespect and appreciate the rare glimpses of humanity. I have learned to bite my tongue. I have learned that right or wrong, what happens behind those walls is completely out of our hands. I have learned that wearing a badge in that environment gives you the right to treat people any way you want, because there isn’t anything anybody is going to do about it.
I reached out to hear other peoples’ stories. I hear them every time I am in the visiting room where I visit, but I wanted to hear from people further away. I heard of an eighty year old man that was turned away after driving six hours because he forgot to leave his wallet in the car. I heard of a woman who was singled out and made to rewrite her paperwork, because they didn’t like the way she checked the boxes. It reminded me of the time that I saw the woman in front of me make lines on her form, instead of checks. I decided to do it that way, and I was singled out, called up, scolded and told to fill out the paper again with checks. I heard over and over again not to complain, because it will only hurt your loved one. I had already been told that on my very first visit when I had other visitors coaching me in the waiting area. I heard of parents unable to get their inmate’s children in to see them. I heard one person sum up visiting in a way that struck me as right on target. He said, “the norm is to make the experience so bad that the visitor won’t come back.” The worst I heard was a woman’s experience when she had to ‘prove’ that she was menstruating by showing an officer her genitals, so she could be issued an approved sanitary napkin. Sadder than that, was hearing that it wasn’t an isolated incident.
I have also heard from some people about the stress of the job on officers and how it affects them. What I have to say to that is, I am stressed also. I am stressed for my nonviolent friends serving fifteen, and thirty and forty year sentences behind bars. I am stressed trying to make ends meet for my family. I am stressed at the overwhelming amount of dishonesty and lack of compassion in the world. But, I wake up every day, and I easily treat people with respect. I have never disrespected an officer, and I have been disrespected more times than I can count. I think it’s time to get a new job if you can’t handle the stress, or it’s time for the Department of Corrections to start enforcing standards of behavior in their employees. But, don’t tell me that stress is an excuse to treat people like garbage.
A Department of Corrections doesn’t exist in the reality of things. I will say over and over, we need a prison system. We need a place to keep people that threaten the physical well being of others until we can figure out if and how to rehabilitate them. And I don’t know what it should be called. We currently have something called ‘Corrections’, as if there is some type of system ‘correcting’ a problem. There isn’t.
We have an entire society of people locked up for, quite simply, absurd sentences. We are actually turning people who, in a different type of system might have hope for a positive future, into criminals. We are destroying their faith in humanity, cutting them off from their loved ones and putting them in the care of understaffed and often undertrained institutions. That is a fact. It is irrefutable. It’s a system built from the bottom up on misery.
It reaches beyond the walls we can’t see through. I read someone else’s thoughts the other day and asked if I could copy and paste it here. This is what Dotty had to say.
Just got off the phone with the hubby. He told me tonight that he did the math, and for a telephone call in Kansas State Correctional Facility, Larned – there is a note by the phones, stating that a 15 minute call will be raised from $2.55 to include an additional 18.2% tax carrying fee, making the total $3.01.
Not bad, you say, compared to other states…but here is where mass incarceration comes into play here in Kansas. Budget cuts in medical, state healthcare programs and many other places have caused the state to tax us three times…18.2% to connect…18.2% during the call…and 18.2% imposed at the end of the call. What good do federal guidelines do to curb the dishonest greed, when clearly we are helping pay to fix a state budget.
The prisons in Lansing are housing men on the floors and some who desperately need to be transferred closer to home are forever denied because prisons in Kansas are overflowing. We speak of needing Prison Reform at state levels as well as federal levels. What good is making a federal law when the states impose whatever they want. For seven months, Larned has had a billboard up regarding a need for correctional officers. There is nothing around for miles and good help is sadly needed there on the very huge campus grounds. It is also the location of the state mental hospital where inmates who are severely mentally and sexually unstable are housed. They use the term ‘work camp’ there to literally work minimum custody inmates in the laundry room and kitchen of the Mental facility. It’s a forced issue among many inmates. They must go to work there if told. Otherwise, they are subject to threats of good time taken, custody levels rolled back, write ups and yes, sometimes segregation.
It will be 10 months till my hubby can see anyone but me and his kids and his brother. None of us can make it that far often enough to help Darian have the support he needs from his family. Not with taxing the phone time 4 times. Yes, he is taxed also to buy phone time now. Darian has a rap sheet a mile long on the inside. His first felony resulted in his first prison term, felony driving without a license. Hardly the hardened criminal they have in there.
This is why we fight in the Prison Reform movement. They just want to do the time they have been given, without harassment and without hostile environments from wardens, guards, medical staff, food service companies, counselors and others that are hired to aid the inmates.
We are in the digital age. Our story is no worse than others. It does not stand out. There are so many cases and stories of abuse that occur within those walls, that no single website holds every account of them. It takes many voices united to make a tough stand to correct what is being done to so many lives. Tonight I will continue to fight for them all and to share their stories until they are heard.
Jamycheal Mitchell passed away on August 19, 2015, in the state of Virginia. He didn’t die of old age. At the age of twenty four, he actually had quite a long life ahead of him. He was a young man who saw the world through eyes that were different than most of ours. Jamycheal suffered from mental illness. We will never quite understand the complexities of his thoughts or his concept of death as it crept up on him. We won’t know how scared he was or his perception of his circumstances. I think it is fair to say he felt pain though.
His mental condition wasn’t a choice. I would like to think it would draw some level of compassion from those around him. It didn’t draw enough apparently. Jamycheal Mitchell died without his family around him. He didn’t have a loved one’s hand to hold or someone to brush his head and tell him help was on the way. That’s because help wasn’t on the way.
Jamycheal Mitchell died lying in a jail cell in the United States of America from probable cardiac arrhythmia accompanying wasting syndrome, as reported by Sarah Kleiner in an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch. He didn’t die in a deserted prison that had no employees or somewhere that his presence could not be seen for months. He died in plain sight in a cell. It wasn’t a quick death. It took months to get into the condition that Jamycheal died in. His condition was seen over and over again in the time it took him to lose thirty four pounds.
I hear and see it all the time – upright, righteous citizens so steadfast in the belief that we have to get tougher on crime. We were tough on crime in Jamycheal Mitchell’s case. He was arrested for stealing a bottle of soda, a snack cake and candy bar. The total value of his theft was $5. Until there is common sense and compassion in the criminal justice system, getting tougher is only going to succeed in diminishing our humanity. How hardened do people have to be to walk by this young man, day after day, and see him transform from a healthy 24 year old man to an emaciated corpse, without sounding 100 alarms?
There are investigations currently going on into how this happened. I am sure there will be a lot of people looking at how paperwork gets shuffled around. Looking into the paper trail won’t help. The system needs an overhaul, and it needs to include training the employees who are responsible for the one out of one hundred people that this country keeps incarcerated. If we are going to put one one-hundreth of our population in cells under the care of others, I think that those people need to be held to a much higher standard.
Jamycheal Mitchell was not arrested for a crime of violence. He stole something to eat and was incarcerated for it. I am familiar enough with the criminal justice system to know that no one was telling Jamycheal that he was going to receive treatment, or explaining to him what the future of his case looked like. The prisons don’t do that for individuals that are not mentally ill. His treatment clearly shows that no one was concerned about how he might be emotionally dealing with his arrest. His treatment speaks volumes about the prison system in this country. He died alone, suffering from starvation and covered in his own feces and urine.
REFERENCES
Kleiner, Sarah. “Report: Clerical Errors Preceded Death of Va. Man Jailed for Stealing Junk Food.” Richmond Times-Dispatch. N.p., 21 Mar. 2016. Web. 04 Apr. 2016.
Kleiner, Sarah. “Advocates Call for Federal Investigation of Death of Va. Man Jailed for Stealing Junk Food.” Richmond Times-Dispatch. N.p., 23 Mar. 2016. Web. 04 Apr. 2016.
With approximately one out of every hundred of us locked up, mass incarceration should be on all our minds. The subject is ugly and probably causes some discomfort, but ignoring it isn’t going to solve the problem. One in a hundred is a problem. Those numbers make us the most incarcerated country in the entire world. Every day that passes that we avoid fixing the problem is one more day that one in one hundred of us lives in a cage. Cages are necessary sometimes, but so many of them are filled to overflowing with throw away people that shouldn’t be there. And, nobody even knows.
I made a promise to myself from the start of this. I can’t tell the story of anyone that committed a violent crime. There are so many inmates that never physically harmed anyone, and I don’t need to read about anyone that actually committed a crime involving violence. I have a lifetime of nonviolent offenders to write about. Then I read about Shimeek Gridine.
Dana Battles was the victim. I made a small effort to locate him, and ask his thoughts, but was not able to, and I didn’t feel comfortable looking very hard. I respect the victim’s privacy and can’t imagine the affect this crime might have had on their lives, although I would love to know what their feelings are on the sentence that Shimeek Gridline was given. I will assume that Dana was scarred physically and emotionally, to some degree, for life. I don’t ever want victims to be overlooked in the telling of a story. Shimeeks’ story doesn’t lessen the price that Dana paid.
Shimeek was 14. From all accounts he had a solid family foundation, and I read that he played Pop Warner football. His mother lost her job not long before the incident, and they moved in with Shimeek’s grandparents.
I know that Shimeek was cared for, but going through some instability that may have included the recent death of two relatives. He was fourteen. I have had a few fourteen year old kids and been one myself. It goes without saying, he wasn’t yet wise, or mature, or fully developed in any way. Who knows if he was shaving yet. I know that he didn’t have the capacity to fully understand actions and consequences. An educated and experienced judge, adult, lawyer, prosecutor, parent – all those people should know that.
The day that the crime took place, Shimeek was with a 12 year old boy. They had a small shotgun, and claimed to have found it under a car. I am not sure it is overly important where the gun came from, but we will assume the boys found it.
The two boys probably felt a little invincible with gun in hand. They attempted to rob a man at gunpoint. I don’t suppose we can ever know what was going through Shimeek’s head when his finger tightened on that trigger enough to set the gun off. The man was grazed in the head and shoulder area, was hospitalized and released the same day. I don’t know the severity of his injury, or if there was any scarring involved, but he was sent home from the hospital the same day that he was shot.
Shimeek Gridine turned himself in to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, accompanied by his grandparents. In reasoning that I don’t quite understand, he was charged as an adult. The boy went before Judge A.C. Soud, without a jury. Shimeek’s family was supportive and their presence was noted in the courtroom. Judge Soud explained that, because Shimeek had so much support, he should have known better. He was sentenced to seventy years for Premeditated Attempted Murder and twenty five years for Armed Robbery. The sentences would be served at the same time and there was no possibility for parole. At the age of 14, a seventy year sentence will probably last longer than your life, earning release at the age of 84.
I can guess that Shimeek was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was not privileged. He probably saw his mother struggling to take care of him, and I am sure he knew some hardships. He played in a neighborhood where you can find shotguns under cars. Most likely the sentencing judge could not have a full appreciation of the child standing in front of him and his life experiences. What I find more frightening about his case than anything else, is the power of one man’s words. With a few sentences a man in a robe essentially sentenced a young boy to never be free again. One man had the power to throw a child’s life away, and did so because he felt the boy had a supportive family and should have known better than to shoot a gun aimed at somebody’s head.
Shimeek is no longer a child. He lives in a prison in Florida. He is scheduled for release in April of 2079. I will be dead by then. Some people worry about prisoners being too comfortable. Most prisons in Florida do not have air conditioning. In order to keep from being idle, inmates get to grow a lot of their own food. Although Shimeek may get to do something to earn some type of job experience in the future, he has no future outside of a cage, so it is irrelevant in his case. At today’s cost to house an inmate in Florida, it will cost taxpayers $1,264,480 if he lives for the seventy year sentence. That price will surely go up as the cost of keeping someone incarcerated increases over that seventy year time. At that cost, Shimeek could have been sent to college, and also been given a personal therapist and personal jailer. Imagine if he had been sent to college after spending four years in a juvenile facility, and agreed to donate a certain amount of hours a year in his given profession as a payback to society for his extremely poor judgement. With that solution, we would be receiving tax money and time from Shimeek, rather than paying to cage him until he dies. He may have been the first in his family line to graduate college, and he may have started a bright path for an entire new generation. We won’t know that though. All we know is that our tax money is going to cage him to death. It is so much more convenient that way for the system, I guess.
A man in a robe couldn’t come up with anything more creative than seventy years in a cage at a pricetag of $1,264,480. This brings me back to the most frightening part of this story. What kind of power are we giving to individuals with our tax dollars and our lives in their hands? I doubt that the Judge has given Shimeek Gridine much more thought. I, on the other hand, will never forget him. With one in a hundred of us caged, nobody should. Shimeek Gridine has changed my world.
