March 2, 2016
Page 7
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Inmates Die Because of Substandard Medical Care
America’s
killer prisons
J ohn k iriakou
I get a lot of letters
from people who’ve
been incarcerated, or
are now behind bars.
Legally I can’t re-
spond directly, be-
cause I’m an ex-con
myself: I was locked
up after blowing the whistle on
the CIA’s illegal and immoral
torture program. Direct contact
with current and former prisoners
would be “consorting with known
felons” — which is banned under
the terms of my probation — so I
keep my distance.
Most of the letters I receive
are complaints about prison con-
ditions and requests for help. In
most cases, these folks just want
somebody to vent to. I wish I
could help them. In most cases I
can’t.
But I do have this column. And
I can tell you about some of the
horrors that land in my mailbox.
I received a letter recently from
a female inmate in a state prison
in Arizona. She wrote about some
of the same things I complained
about when I was incarcerated.
It’s too hot in the summer and
too cold in the winter, she said. It’s
overcrowded. There aren’t enough
by
jobs, and even if you get one, you
make a slave’s wage — often just
10 cents an hour. There’s no mon-
ey for training programs, prison-
ers are never actually
“rehabilitated,” and the
food is inedible.
None of these were
surprising to me. The
American prison system
is broken. I know that
from first-hand experi-
ence.
“The health care here is horri-
ble,“ the writer said. “Check to see
how many women have died here
in the last two years because of
improper health care. Women who
complain of chest pains are sent
back to their cell and told there is
nothing wrong, to drink water, and
to take an aspirin.”
I believe her. My prison bunk-
mate complained of chest pains
for months and was told to take an
aspirin. He finally had a massive
If the people running prisons
know there’s a problem and
do nothing about it, is that
not manslaughter? Is that not
depraved indifference? A person
who should be alive is not — all
because of the incompetence or
apathy of prison administrators.
But one issue the writer raised
was especially concerning. I’ve
written before, including in my
blog posts from prison, about
medical care there. I sometimes
wondered if things were any bet-
ter in women’s prisons. Apparent-
ly they’re not.
heart attack. After a month spent
chained to a bed in a local hospi-
tal, he was transferred to a prison
hospital 11 hours away from his
family. He’ll never make it to the
end of his sentence.
The woman who wrote me this
letter had seen the same thing.
There was a woman there, she
wrote, who “was bleeding for
months.” The inmate “kept putting
in requests to see a doctor and was
told repeatedly that there was noth-
ing wrong. Finally, eight months
later, she was sent to an outside spe-
cialist and told that she had cervical
cancer that was so far progressed
that all they could do was to put her
in chemo to slow it down.”
The prognosis? “The doctor
said her time is limited. She’s go-
ing to die.”
The real tragedy of this situa-
tion is that it’s so common. Prison-
ers across America die every day
from substandard medical care.
If the people running prisons
know there’s a problem and do
nothing about it, is that not man-
slaughter? Is that not depraved in-
difference? A person who should
be alive is not — all because of the
incompetence or apathy of prison
administrators.
This isn’t an issue of who did
what or who broke what law. Ev-
ery American deserves decent
health care. That includes our
prisoners.
If we can’t say that much for
the most vulnerable among us, we
can’t expect any better for the rest
of us.
OtherWords columnist John
Kiriakou is an associate fellow
at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Distributed by OtherWords.org
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