Prison Reform

[China]

US prison labor is cruel and pointless legalized slavery. I know first-hand

 

Almost immediately after I was sent to prison, I was assigned to a “program”, the term American prison officials use for a job. I was to sweep the prison hallways, alongside roughly 30 other men. Together we pushed brooms across gray corridors hour after hour, day after day.

 

No matter how many hours I worked, I couldn’t afford toilet paper, soap or toothpaste. We had to pay for basic hygiene products at exploitative markups, way more than they cost in free society, and I was paid 10 cents an hour. To survive in prison, even with a full-time job, I was forced to rely on family, who struggled to support me financially.

 

There’s a misleading narrative pushed by officials about prison labor, one that falsely frames prison jobs as rehabilitative. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

In prison, my work was meaningless and dehumanizing. It conveyed no new skills, taught me no life lessons and earned me next to nothing. It did not build my résumé, prepare me to navigate workplace relationships or teach me how to budget. It served only to devalue my labor and person. Prisons are about punishment, not rehabilitation.

 

I had no choice in whether I went to work or not – and there were no sick days. If I didn’t go, I would be locked in my cell for 23 hours a day. And as little as it was, I needed the pay.

 

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[EmirOfShmo]

 

[skinsmarydu]

^^^  That is utter bull****.  I mean, I would hope they send non-violent prisoners, but there are knives and all other manner of evil in a restaurant...****, the french fry scoop could be used as a weapon.  (A frozen burger patty would also probably cause some damage if ya got hit upside the head with one.)

I've got about 5 other things that make this a terrible idea aside from the money part, which is awful on its own.

 

[PleaseBlitz]

1 hour ago, skinsmarydu said:

^^^  That is utter bull****.  I mean, I would hope they send non-violent prisoners, but there are knives and all other manner of evil in a restaurant...****, the french fry scoop could be used as a weapon.  (A frozen burger patty would also probably cause some damage if ya got hit upside the head with one.)

I've got about 5 other things that make this a terrible idea aside from the money part, which is awful on its own.

 

 

The VAST majority of incarcerated people are just tying to do their time so they can GTFO.  They aren't violent psychos that just want to stab everyone they see.  Sheesh. 

[Busch1724]

Also work skills are important as many of them struggle to function in normal society afterwards. Now if the money they earned was held back into a savings account for them while they were working during prison, may remove the perception of prison slave labor. 

[skinsmarydu]

We've had yet another prisoner at the Fulton County Jail die. 

[China]

Alabama prisoners' bodies returned to families with hearts, other organs missing, lawsuit claims

 

The bodies of two men who died while incarcerated in Alabama's prison system were missing their hearts or other organs when returned to their families, a federal lawsuit alleges.

 

The family of Brandon Clay Dotson, who died in a state prison in November, filed a federal lawsuit last month against the Alabama Department of Corrections and others saying his body was decomposing and his heart was missing when his remains were returned to his family.

 

In a court filing in the case last week, the daughter of Charles Edward Singleton, another deceased inmate, said her father's body was missing all of his internal organs when it was returned in 2021.

 

Lauren Faraino, an attorney representing Dotson's family, said via email Wednesday that the experience of multiple families shows this is "absolutely part of a pattern."

 

The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment late Wednesday afternoon to the Alabama Department of Corrections.

 

Dotson, 43, was found dead on Nov. 16 at Ventress Correctional Facility. His family, suspecting foul play was involved in his death, hired a pathologist to do a second autopsy and discovered his heart was missing, according to the lawsuit. His family filed a lawsuit seeking to find out why his heart was removed and to have it returned to them.

 

"Defendants' outrageous and inexcusable mishandling of the deceased's body amounts to a reprehensible violation of human dignity and common decency," the lawsuit states, adding that "their appalling misconduct is nothing short of grave robbery and mutilation."

 

Dotson's family, while seeking information about what happened to his heart, discovered that other families had similar experiences, Faraino said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

‘Please help me.’ Inmate begged for help before jail staff let him die, lawsuit says

 

A Minnesota man has filed a federal lawsuit after he says jail staff failed to provide medical care to his son, leading to his death.

 

On July 18, 2022, 41-year-old Lucas Bellamy was arrested and taken to the Hennepin County Jail. In the days that followed, Bellamy would plead with jail employees for help. Three days late he was dead.

 

When Bellamy was booked into the jail, he informed the staff that he had swallowed a bag of drugs. He was taken to an emergency room at a local hospital, where he was sedated and monitored for several hours before being sent back to the jail, according to the lawsuit.

 

Hospital staff ordered that Bellamy be monitored and returned to the emergency room if any new symptoms showed up, the lawsuit said.

 

In the next few days, Bellamy began to develop new symptoms and could barely stand, according to the lawsuit.

 

On the morning of July 20, just after midnight, Bellamy became very ill and began vomiting. He was then moved from general population to a single-person cell, the lawsuit said.

 

Court records say Bellamy was barely eating and declining meals. That evening, his condition worsened. When a nurse came to check on him, he was complaining of stomach pain and could barely stand up, causing him to have to crawl on the floor to be seen by the nurse, the lawsuit said.

 

Bellamy was told to sit at a table, according to the lawsuit, but he collapsed face-first on the ground.

 

He asked to go to the hospital, but the nurse declined to send him, the lawsuit said.

 

Around 1:30 a.m. on July 21, Bellamy used an intercom to call a jail employee. He screamed “help me, help me,” the lawsuit said. When the employee came to his cell, he found Bellamy in a fetal position on the ground saying, “My stomach hurts really bad, help me.”

 

A nurse checked on him and noted in her chart, “(Bellamy) was kneeling while his head is on the floor and crying when checked. (Bellamy) verbalized ‘I need to go to the hospital, please help me,’” according to the court documents.

 

But the employee and nurse never helped Bellamy off the ground and did not send him to the hospital, the lawsuit said. Instead, the nurse noted that Bellamy was “able to stand up, walk outside his cell, sit up and sit still for vitals signs taking.”

 

Bellamy collapsed once again, as a nurse was taking his vitals, the lawsuit said.

 

About an hour later, he requested to see the nurse again. The lawsuit says the notes the nurse charted reflected that she was accusing Bellamy of faking the pain. Bellamy once again collapsed and was left on the ground by employees, according to the lawsuit.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

‘Wild, wild west.’ Families say organs of deceased Alabama inmates have been removed without their consent

 

After inmate Jim Kennedy Jr. died last year at the Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest, Alabama, his sister-in-law got an unusual call from the funeral home preparing the body for burial.

 

“Did y’all realize he came back without his organs?” Sara Kennedy recalled being told. “Liver, heart. All of your major organs. They were gone.”

 

“He had nothing,” said Kennedy’s brother, Marvin.

 

Another inmate suffered a similar fate. Arthur Stapler was 85 when he died five months after Kennedy Jr. at the Brookwood Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham. He had been housed at Hamilton Aged and Infirmed Center, which is also run by the Alabama Department of Corrections.

 

“It’s like a horror movie that I can’t wake up from,” said Stapler’s son, Billy, who learned about the missing organs after hiring a private pathologist to perform an autopsy on the body.

It was only after contacting the University of Alabama at Birmingham – which is among the providers that conducts autopsies for the prison system – that Stapler’s family received what they were told were his brain and heart in plastic viscera bags. The lungs and some other internal organs came back in pieces, but not all were returned.

 

With more than 26,000 inmates, Alabama’s severely overcrowded and understaffed prisons are the target of a US Justice Department lawsuit that alleges the state not only fails to prevent violence and sexual abuse behind bars but does not protect inmates from excessive force by prison staff or provide safe conditions.

 

Alabama’s men’s prisons are also the country’s deadliest, with a homicide rate in 2019 more than seven times higher than the national average, according to a report by the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative.

 

And the state’s mass incarceration nightmare does not appear to end with death.

 

The state Department of Corrections and the University of Alabama at Birmingham now face disturbing allegations from the families of five inmates whose organs were removed and reportedly kept without consent, according to lawsuits filed last week in Montgomery County Circuit Court. A lawyer for the families alleged the organs were retained for teaching purposes.

 

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