I have a friend who is quite rich. Like a lot of rich people, he’s very careful with his money, by which I mean that he’s constantly shifting it around to make sure it’s maximizing its potential.Sometimes, all this shifting about will mean his checking ac
If you’ve ever been arrested for a misdemeanor offense, like jumping a turnstile, smoking a joint, or protesting a cause in a way the authorities would rather you didn’t, then you’ll know that your best chance of avoiding jail has less to do with what you
When prison illness becomes a death sentence
On 28 October 2010, Lagalia Afola received a phone call from the Bent County Correctional Facility, a private prison operated by the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA), informing her that her 26-year-old son, Terrell Griswold, was dead. Terrell was serving a three-year sentence for burglary and was due to be released in early 2011. Sadly for him, and for his grieving family, he never made it home. The autopsy report stated that Terrell died as a result of “hypertensive cardiovascular disease” and that he had a clinical history of hypertension, for which he refused to take medication. His mother found this conclusion hard to accept and, after months of persistent enquiry, was finally provided with at least some of her son’s medical records. Upon reviewing the records, she discovered that her son had been suffering from a blockage in his prostrate that prevented him from urinating properly, causing chronic kidney damage, and which, she believes, ultimately contributed to his abrupt demise. This blockage in Terrell’s prostrate was discovered on 3 December 2009 by Dr David Oba, an attending physician at the CCA prison. The doctor noted at the time that inmate Griswold reported having had problems passing urine for the past two months: “He has the urge to void but sometimes is unable to void at all, other times he has a very weak stream but is able to void.” The doctor also noted that he had discussed with the patient that “he may have a chronic sub-acute prostatitis”, which he planned to treat with a 30-day cycle of ciprofloxacin (Cipro). If there was no improvement he wrote that “he may need an eval [sic] with cystoscope with urology.” According to the records seen (pdf), Terrell was never treated by an urologist during his entire stay at the CCA facility, and it appears he did not receive the Cipro for almost six months. On 27 January 2010, Terrell had a follow-up visit with a nurse. The nurse’s report of the visit reads as follows:
Terrell Griswold, who died, aged 26, while serving a three-year sentence in Bent County Correctional Facility, Colorado.
Inside Story: the US Prison System
The Guardian Newspaper has begun a new series that examines what life is like inside American prisons. If you have ever been in prison, have a family member in prison or are currently in prison and would like to share your experience, please write to:
Sadhbh Walshe
PO Box 1466
New York, NY 10150
Or send an email to: sadhbh@ymail.com
Why California’s prisoners are starving for solitary change
Californian prisoners have repeatedly gone on hunger strike over the solitary confinement in which some spend decades
On 19 December 2011, three prisoners at Corcoran State Prison wrote a letter to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) threatening to go on hunger strike if improvements were not made to their living conditions. Evidently, they received no response from the CDCR: the hunger strike began on 28 December. This latest hunger strike, the third in less than six months, is small potatoes compared to the previous two, which were state-wide and involved thousands of inmates. According to Terry Thornton, a CDCR spokeswoman, it may already be over. But the fact that Californian prisoners have once again resorted to starving themselves to protest the conditions of their confinement does suggest that something is rotten in the Golden State’s penal system. The first hunger strike began on 1 July 2011, and ended three weeks later when the CDCR agreed, in theory at least, to address the participants’ five core demands, which amounted to better living conditions, adequate food and clothing, an end to group punishments and most importantly, an end to the gang validation policy that sentences inmates to endless terms in solitary confinement cells, known as SHUs. One of my correspondents, Anthony, who has an indeterminate SHU sentence (meaning, there’s no end in sight), described to me in a letter what it is about the SHU environment he and his fellow inmates find hard to tolerate. “We’re entitled to receive 10 hours of ‘outdoor exercise’ a week, but lucky if we get half that. At times, we’re cooped up an entire week in our cells before the opportunity of expanding our lungs with fresh air. ‘Outdoor exercise’ consists of being placed in a dog kennel-like cage, no bigger than our cells. We’re prohibited from all recreational and exercise equipment, compelling most to pace idly back and forth. “Blinding bright lights remain on 24 hours a day within our (windowless 8ft x 10ft) cells as we have been denied control over them. Our lavatories are electronically installed, allotting each cell two flushes every 15 minutes.” 
Welcome to Incarceration America
The US locks up a greater proportion of its population than any other country in the world. This fact bears closer examination
We like locking people up in America. If incarceration were an Olympic sport, the United States would come away with every gold medal available and break a few world records in the process. On average, Americans are locked up at a rate (pdf) four times higher than any other nationality, and we have the world’s largest female prison population by a considerable margin. Before the “get tough” policies adopted in the 1970s, less than 200,000 on average were behind bars. Now that number is closer to 2 million. That may make you feel more safe, or less, if you consider that all of our chances of ending up in prison someday have increased exponentially. With that in mind, we kind of owe it to ourselves to at least know what goes on behind prison walls. With this new series, we hope to shed some light on what life is like inside our prisons by hearing directly from inmates, their families, correction officers and anyone else whose life is impacted by the practice of incarceration. So far, my correspondence with inmates has revealed a fascinating world of endurance, resourcefulness, terrible choices, terrible cruelty and a lot of pain and suffering. The most disturbing aspect of the corrections model, as it currently stands, however, is how much it has failed to either rehabilitate offenders or deter them from re-offending. No matter how harsh the prison stay, at least four in ten inmates will end up back inside (pdf), soon after their release – usually on a more serious charge and for a longer, and more expensive, stay. One of my correspondents, who is 20 years into a life sentence he earned for a crime he committed while serving time for a lesser offense, gave me his take on why prisons are often better at turning small-time crooks into full-on felons rather than model citizens. “We do not live in a civilised society here. It could be, but rather than separate repeat violent offenders and have programs/services designed to show young, confused, antisocial people how to become productive members of society once released, or just allow them to learn enough in a safe enough environment to be able to draw on later when they run out of piss and vinegar, they throw us all together with a pile of bones to fight over like hungry dogs.”
Interview with Tensie Whelan: ‘we meet resistance every step of the way’
The President of the Rainforest Alliance tells Sadhbh Walshe about her determination to bring sustainable products into the mainstream
Spend an hour or so in the company of Tensie Whelan, the President of the Rainforest Alliance, and you may find yourself wanting to rush out to plant a tree, such is her enthusiasm for the cause to which she has dedicated her life; changing how we do business with the environment. Whelan learned early on in her career while working as a journalist and environmental consultant in Costa Rica, that business and the environment are mutually dependent rather than mutually exclusive entities, and they must sustain each other in order to prosper. Understanding this fundamental principal is the key to mainstreaming sustainability and changing how we produce and consume on a grand scale. The Rainforest Alliance has managed to certify 63.6 million hectares of forestland and helped over 80,000 farms adopt sustainable practices in just two decades of operation, but Whelan is the first to acknowledge that they meet with resistance every step of the way – from the farm level where producers don’t want to change their ways up to the big buyers who don’t want to pay more for something they say consumers don’t care about anyway. Whelan does not accept such excuses. “So I come back to them and say ‘Well, did the consumer wake up in the morning and decide they wanted a ruffled potato chip? No! You marketed it to them, until they had to have it. And you can do the same thing with sustainability.’ “
The Right Word: Praying for Chris Christie to run
Conservatives are ecstatic at the prospect that Governor Chris Christie might enter the presidential race, despite the New Jersey politician’s repeated assertions that he has no intention of doing so. While he is not everyone’s candidate of choice – Bill O’Reilly thinks he shouldn’t run because he hasn’t been in his current job for long enough – Rush Limbaugh is quick to explain that the enthusiasm for Christie’s phantom candidacy has nothing to do with unhappiness with the Republican field but just that they need to find someone, anyone, who can defeat President Obama (listen to clip). This whole notion that the field is weak, in other words, is not something that the voting public thinks. The reaction that some people are having to Christie is, “Oh, God, please get in,” and then that does indicate an unhappiness with everybody else that’s in the field. It boils down, I think, to people wanting somebody they think can win, and it boils down to people wanting somebody that talks tough, and talks straight, from the gut. Up until the last two primary debates, many conservatives thought they had their straight-talking, straight-shooting candidate: Rick Perry. But since Perry’s disappointing debate performance, where he failed to capitalise on his positives (the record number of executions and the record number of low-wage jobs without benefits he gave Texas), and instead, allowed his negatives (a willingness to afford the children of undocumented immigrants an education and to vaccinate girls against cervical cancer) to get the better of him, it is understandable that manyRepublicans would be literally begging Christie to step in and fill the void. It remains to be seen if Christie can pass the conservative litmus test, however – already, Limbaugh fears there might be too much of the John McCain in him. On the other hand, if he does, it may well work against him with the Republican establishment.
The Right Word: Fox News fights class war
Class warfare is the word on everyone’s lips this week, ever since President Obama made the shocking announcement that millionaires, billionaires and corporations will be called upon to pay their fare share in taxes. Bill O’Reilly was so distressed about the presidents attempts to “punish achievement” that it looked as though he might burst into tears on Monday night. Fortunately, he managed to hold it together. He did set the blogosphere on fire however by suggesting that if President Obama does go through with the tax increase on super-rich people, like him, then he may actually quit his job rather than hand over any more of his “sweat equity” to the federal government (view clip). He played a clip of President Obama saying to a journalist in 2009 that raising taxes in a recession was not a good thing to do. (Actually, the same clip has been playing on a loop on Fox News), and he bemoaned the fact that the president has since changed his mind. Correct. So let me ask you: what’s changed in two years? The economy is still awful and unemployment’s even higher. So why have you changed your mind about a tax increase on the affluent and business? O’Reilly may have inadvertently answered his own question. The rich have had their tax cut since 2001, the same tax cut that was supposed to trickle down all sorts of wealth and opportunity on the rest of us, but instead, the opposite has happened. Unemployment is growing, the deficit is growing; indeed, the only thing not growing is the economy.
