Kevin Tower on the Top Three Problems Facing Prisoners
Another essay from Kevin Tower, a resident of Lakeland Correctional Facility, has arrived.
Kevin Tower has written another essay.
Tower is, I believe, a wrongfully convicted inmate currently being housed by the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC).
Here are his previous essays: essay 1, and essay 2.
In this essay, Kevin talks about the three biggest problems facing prisoners.
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he three top problems with incarceration are: 1) Housing, 2) Healthcare and 3) Involuntary Servitude. The problems with incarceration do not include Sentencing, Parole or the Length of Incarceration. Those are separate issues.
1. Housing.
a. The United States is moving away from solitary confinement and the length of time spent in segregation is slowly being reduced.
b. Many prisoners are housed in open to semi-open dormitories that resemble air raid shelters. There is no privacy. 24 hours a day without privacy is the norm. Infections and Infestations are regular and lead to death in some cases. There is no privacy to pray or study to improve oneself. There is no privacy in the bathrooms. There are chronic staff shortages. The American Correctional Association has standards for prisons. Some Judges call these "basic standards of human decency." Unfortunately prisons do no follow these standards. The prisons spend the funding on staff wages. If additional funding is available, the prison system will always advocate for higher wages and benefits for staff and not advocate for modern prisons with appropriate space. Double bunking of prisoners can cause substantial harm to prisoners for having to endure the behavior of other prisoners which often lead to assaults and increased prison sentences. In society two people would not endure 24 hours straight in a small household bathroom together, let alone month after month.
2. Healthcare. Medical and Mental Healthcare is extremely degraded in prisons. In society you have competition. If your Doctor or Professional is not an advocate for you, you can choose another provider. That competition helps keep up the standard of care. If a provider or managed care system is not living up to the standards, they will go out of business. In prisons, there is no competition. That lack of competition causes complacency and apathy towards helping prisoners. The standard of care in prisons is suppose to be the same as in the community, but it is not. What would benefit prisoners and the system would be to place all State and Federal prisoners under Medicaid. Require States to adopt a voluntary health service corps of providers that are independent and 50% or less of their practice is devoted to prison healthcare. This would increase the Standard of Care for prisoners. If States utilized Direct Primary Care physicians, the cost of prisoner Healthcare would likely decrease. This could be accomplished by providing online and seminar training to allow providers access to prisons. Prisons could make office space available for providers and also utilize telemedicine for followup care. This would create competition, advocacy and higher standards of care.
3. Involuntary servitude. States are starting to move away from involuntary servitude. Prisoner wages in some States have not increased in 30 or more years and in fact have been cut in half in some cases. In Michigan, labor is not a component of a prisoners sentence. However, prisoners who do not work have little privileges and are viewed negatively by prison administers. When in fact the way they are housed in pole barns presumes they have full privileges. Administrators are suppose to ensure prisoners housed in temporary pole barns are not confined more than 12 hours as day. Administrators blatantly violate these accommodations. In other words, if prisoners do not work there will be consequences. When there are consequences for not working, work is not voluntary.
In Michigan, if you are a food service assignment, you start out making less than $25 per month. $25 per month is not enough to purchase adequate hygiene products at prisoner store prices to keep clean. Prisoner's are heavily dependent on their loves ones to survive financially. It is just another burden on generally poor families.
Well written! When I was in prison I filled out a form to see a doctor, but I was told it could take three weeks to see one much less your medication. The medications aren’t free either and the phone calls were costing my father $40 a call for only three minutes. It’s a disgusting racket