by Dale Chappell

While the coronavirus runs rampant through the country’s prisons, medical treatment for even serious problems has taken a backseat, leaving prisoners to get creative and perform their own treatment. For one New Jersey prisoner, this meant cleaning his infected wound with bleach, his family says, making them concerned for his health.

The problem started with just a small scrape on his foot, probably caused by ill-fitting boots the prison forced him to wear, Patch.com reported on June 4, 2020. Maybe this wouldn’t be a problem for most people, but for this 36-year-old man housed at the Northern State Prison in Newark, a small cut on his foot could easily turn into a life-threatening dilemma: He’s a diabetic, and any wound to his feet puts him at risk for infection that could lead to amputation.

Soon, an ugly, open wound broke out and an infection went all the way to his knee. The prison gave him some antibiotic ointment and ibuprofen for pain, plus some oral antibiotics. This didn’t work, and he developed cellulitis and borderline septicemia, a systemic and life-threatening infection that is difficult to treat even in the hospital with IV antibiotics.

Finally, he was transferred ...

by Dale Chappell

On March 20, 2020, Alaska’s Supreme Court shut down a state prisoner’s argument that his diagnosis as a schizophrenic was incorrect because he claims he can actually see ghosts due to a genetic mutation.

Adam Israel had been in custody of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) since 2005 for the stabbing death of his mother. Based on a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia – he claimed that family members, possibly including comedian Steve Martin, had conspired to keep him in state custody to prevent him from testifying to rapes and murders they had committed – he was held in a mental institution.

In October 2014, he filed a pro se medical malpractice lawsuit, claiming that he was “fraudulently diagnosed” as schizophrenic, and that this had prevented him from release on parole and other rehabilitative progress. He said the delusions he suffers are actually real, claiming that he could see electro-magnetic fields emitted from “poltergeists” because of a genetic mutation resulting from family inbreeding.

Israel asked the court to allow him to demonstrate, but Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffner called his testimony “bizarre and, at least from a lay perspective, consistent with that of someone suffering from paranoid ...

by Dale Chappell 

Suicides in California prisons reached a record high last year, with 38 recorded. According to prison and union officials, a lack of psychiatrists and other problems in the state’s prison system contributed to the high number. 

Despite an offer of a $300,000 annual salary plus government benefits, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has yet to convince psychiatrists to fill the vacancies in the prison system. About 40 percent of the state’s psychiatry jobs are empty, including those at the state’s prison and mental health institutions, according to data from 2018, the last year the numbers were available from CDCR 

Elizabeth Gransee, a spokesperson for California Correctional Healthcare Services, said the vacancy rate is 28 percent if accounting for contract psychiatrists, including those who treat via telepsychiatry video conferencing. “We are continuously improving recruitment of health care staff including mental health care providers,” she responded in an email to the Sacramento Bee. “[CDCR] continues to make substantial improvements in the delivery of health care and we will continue to ensure our population has access to the care they need.” 

Dr. Stuart Bussey disagrees. He is the president of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, and says that in addition to ...

by Dale Chappell

Almost 60 percent of COVID-19 cases in Chicago were linked to police throwing people in the Cook County Jail and then releasing them to their home communities, according to a Harvard University study published in June 2020. Researchers found that “jail cycling” accounted for over one-third of coronavirus cases in Illinois.

The study examined the relationship between jail cycling and community infections across different neighborhoods in the state of Illinois, one of the nation’s largest jails. That data showed that as of April 19, 2020, almost 1 in 6 coronavirus cases in the state were linked to people who cycled through the Cook County Jail in Chicago in March.

Jail cycling happens when people are arrested for minor infractions and put in jail for a short time and then released. According to studies, about 95 percent of people booked into jails across the country were arrested for non-violent crimes, and 42 percent were proven innocent. The numbers add up fast. According to the FBI, about 28,000 people are arrested every single day in this country. That means over 10 million people are arrested and cycled through a county jail every year in the U.S.

Jail cycling has ...

by Dale Chappell

It used to be that specially trained prisoners who worked on the front lines fighting wildfires couldn’t continue to work as firefighters after their release. Thanks to a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on September 11, 2020, some prisoner-firefighters may find it’s possible to stay on the job.

The new law (designated as AB 2147) allows releasees to petition the court to dismiss their convictions after completing their sentences, which would then allow them to obtain certification as an emergency medical technician (EMT), something most fire departments require to get in the door. It’s not that prisoner-firefighters couldn’t be firefighters after release, but that they couldn’t get the additional certifications to obtain actual employment after release. The state categorically barred anyone with a felony conviction from obtaining an EMT certification. Now that obstacle has been removed for some.

“Inmates who have stood on the frontlines, battling historic fires should not be denied the right to later become a professional firefighter,” Newsom said as he signed the bill into law.

Assembly member Eloise Gómez Reyes, who sponsored the bill, said the new law has a broader purpose. “Rehabilitation without strategies to ensure the formerly incarcerated have ...

by Dale Chappell

The Indiana National Guard has switched roles in helping the Indiana Department of Correction (“IDOC”) during the coronavirus pandemic, from that of health-care workers to prison guards, as prison staff become infected by COVID-19.

Back in May 2020, as COVID-19 infected the nation’s prisons, the National Guard was brought in to help IDOC with detection and treatment of COVID-19 in state prisons. It was an effort to stay ahead of the game, or at least keep up with the wildfire spread of the disease. But things got out of hand and the National Guard switched from medical workers to actually running the prisons.

At first, teams of four National Guard members were deployed to Plainfield, Pendleton, and Westville Correctional Facilities. They expected to be there until the end of May, maybe a few weeks. Members with experience as EMTs, firefighters, and other health-care background were selected to bolster IDOC’s medical staff.

“These medical professional quickly augmented the governor’s efforts to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in correctional facilities during this public health crisis,” the National Guard’s website said about its work in state prisons.

By August 2020, entire National Guard units were deployed to operate some of ...

by Dale Chappell

Every state spends more money on prisons than on schools, according to PolitiFact. But you can’t blame the states — the federal government made them do it.

Some 25 years ago, President Bill Clinton signed into law the biggest incendiary device that lit the fire of mass incarceration: The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (VCCLEA). “Gangs and drugs have taken over our streets and undermined our schools,” he said as he signed the bill into law before a wall of uniformed police officers.

Under the VCCLEA, the federal government coerced the states to adopt harsher sentences and require that prisoners serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. States that refused to go along lost out on $12.5 billion in grants ($19 billion in today’s terms) to build new prisons and bulk up police forces. Most states jumped on board.

But states had already been hiking up their sentences because violent crime was rampant in the early 1990s. So requiring even longer sentences, especially with the 85 percent rule and abolishment of parole, meant lots more prisoners in jail for lots more time. This “Truth-In-Sentencing” scheme filled prisons to capacity, prompting the prison ...

by Dale Chappell

The family of one of the prisoners who died of COVID-19 at San Quentin prison in California has filed the first wrongful death claim — a precursor to a lawsuit — against the prison. Papers filed by the family’s lawyers on September 10, 2020, detailed how prison officials ignored the risks of the coronavirus and transferred 121 prisoners to San Quentin from a known COVID-19 hotspot without testing them — and then housed those prisoners in an open dorm with San Quentin prisoners without any precautions.

In short order, more than 2,237 prisoners became infected and 26 died (one guard also died). The transferred prisoners came from the California Institution for Men in Chino, where more than 600 cases of COVID-19 were reported with at least nine deaths.

Known for being the home of California’s death row, San Quentin also houses large numbers of low-level, non-violent prisoners, with many being older and at-risk for COVID-19. One of those prisoners was Daniel Ruiz who, at age 61, had at least four identified medical problems that put him at risk for death of COVID-19, according to the papers filed. He was one of 40,000 prisoners identified across the state ...

by Dale Chappell

A study by a group of criminologists and sociologists published in August 2020 found that an entire generation during the “tough on crime” era of the 1980s and early 1990s spent more time in prison serving longer sentences than any other generation before or after. Many are still serving time under those harsh sentences.

The collaboration of experts from the State University of New York at Albany and the University of Pennsylvania analyzed data from 1.6 million prisoners, focusing mainly on North Carolina during 1972 to 2016, as it was representative of the idea of longer prisons sentences in an attempt to curb crime across the country.

The highly detailed study found that the crime rates for rape, aggravated assault, burglary, and other violent crimes were higher in the 1970s than in the 1990s. Yet, those adults who came of age during the 1990s had higher rates of arrest and incarceration than their counterparts just 20 years earlier.

Titled “Locking Up My Generation,” the study’s authors identified a “cohort effect” that filled the nation's prisons in record time, which they defined as a group that shares “common historical or social experiences.” To be more specific, it’s a ...

by Dale Chappell

The push to deport as many foreign nationals as possible under the Trump administration has helped to spread the coronavirus across Latin America, thanks to increased flights from overcrowded immigration detention centers across the country under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) program designed to speed up deportations and a lack of testing.

After being detained by ICE in the Krome Detention Center in Florida for three weeks, “Carlos,” a Colombian national who flew to Indianapolis under a travel visa to go shopping with his aunt for toys and clothes for his newborn son, was put on a plane and sent back to Colombia by ICE. What nobody knew was that Carlos was infected with COVID-19 and brought it back to his country, along with several others on that plane. And nobody on the plane was given masks.

Nicholas Barrera, another Colombian deported by ICE, spent four months in Krome and another ICE facility in Wakulla County, Florida. Protected in a “sanctuary city” in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Barrera was picked up by ICE in Florida (not a protected area) for a broken headlight. He was deported, leaving his wife and kids back in Maryland. He tested positive for ...