Do you want to die in jail?
October 17, 2009 8:01 PM   Subscribe

 
Odd that you'd quote the line about the guards' resentment, considering the actual article hardly touches on that issue. But, an interesting read nonetheless, thanks!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:16 PM on October 17, 2009 [5 favorites]


I don't understand the resentment, everyone can get hospice care.
posted by yodelingisfun at 8:17 PM on October 17, 2009


> Odd that you'd quote the line about the guards' resentment, considering the actual article hardly touches on that issue.

True, but it was the most striking thing about the article to me. (Not that the rest of it isn't striking.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:21 PM on October 17, 2009


Prison guards complaining that the inmates get better healthcare than their families? They should move to California where the Corrections Officers union is more 'out of control' than the NYC Teachers union. And hospice care isn't that easy to get, even for celebrities: Hollywood's Motion Picture & Television Home & Hospital is closing down (anti-shutdown site with auto-start video). Roman Polanski may consider the possibility of spending the rest of his life in jail not so bad. Hell, it may be a viable option for many of us; maybe that's why the President is getting so many death threats...

Apologies; my stream of consciousness tonight has turned into a wide spray
posted by wendell at 8:34 PM on October 17, 2009


I just sat through a discussion with coworkers last night about a tv show called 'America's Toughest Prisons'. The general consensus was that if people were making weapons and killing each other and in gaol for life, they should just get 'a bullet in the head'. Oh, and the female guard who worked there 'was asking for it' when she was raped several times.

It kills me to imagine people like Mr Henson who make a terrible mistake and come to learn, in prison, why it was so wrong, and decide to make a real life for themselves (if they ever get the chance). If he is released, and tries to do his best, he'll constantly face criticism and complete hatred from these people who think he deserves 'a bullet in the head' for his past mistake.

Not that every prisoner is an angel in disguise, of course, but it's the inability to perceive that these people have had hard lives, and have the potential to learn and change, that really gets me.
posted by twirlypen at 8:35 PM on October 17, 2009 [13 favorites]


I don't understand the resentment, everyone can get hospice care.

This the GOP definition of everyone, right?
posted by eriko at 8:35 PM on October 17, 2009 [8 favorites]


Do you get hospice care before or after the death panels?
posted by Balisong at 8:39 PM on October 17, 2009


Umm no, I am actually a hospice nurse and the very poor make up the largest part of our clientele by far
posted by yodelingisfun at 8:45 PM on October 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


And how do they get it?
posted by waitingtoderail at 8:47 PM on October 17, 2009


Well medicaid or if they don't qualify for anything else, there is a hospice fund that goes towards covering the uninsured. Oh yeah VA covers hospice as well. I often talk to folks where hospice is the first steady medical care they have ever had. We also have a fund to buy things like air conditioning or food or whatever for people who need it.
posted by yodelingisfun at 8:53 PM on October 17, 2009


Everyone* can get hospice care!

*Please note the word everyone in this context assumes that people have been broken into categories based on socioeconomic status numbered 1 through 20 where one is the highest and that, in this system, everyone can get hospice care. Everytwo and everythree can too. The fours through twenties... well, they're not everyone's problem.
posted by patrick rhett at 8:55 PM on October 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


In my area, Hospice is available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. They will happily take whatever they can get from insurance or Medicaid, if the patient has those.
posted by dilettante at 8:55 PM on October 17, 2009


Everyone* can get hospice care! so yeah quit being an ass, I may be wrong about hospice where you live but for real, we never turn anyone away.
posted by yodelingisfun at 8:57 PM on October 17, 2009


I once heard someone in a bar remark that all US prison sentences are lifetime sentences, and that stuck with me. It means there's no point even talking about rehabilitation: the prison system itself takes even one-time, stupid-drunk-high lawbreakers and turns them into psychologically shattered lifetime criminals with permanently broken lives. That's what the system does.

Over and over again, stories about the prison system seem to show that once you're locked up for any time period, your civilian life is effectively over, that you can never really recover.

If health care wasn't even more embarrassing and high profile right now, the USA's barbaric criminal justice system would be getting a lot more scorn, I think. It's similarly unbelievable, coming from a self-described first-world nation.
posted by rokusan at 8:59 PM on October 17, 2009 [40 favorites]


I should also that we are reimbursed X amount for services but we never charge the patients anything. I think health care in the country is a sad mess but I think hospice is awesome and I'd be surprised to find out there was some place were it wasn't available for the poor.
posted by yodelingisfun at 9:00 PM on October 17, 2009


> Everyone* can get hospice care! so yeah quit being an ass, I may be wrong about hospice where you live but for real, we never turn anyone away

Helpful hint: You might want to lead with 'where you live for real' to stave off any confusion.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:01 PM on October 17, 2009 [2 favorites]


Well that begs the question, has anyone in the US been turned away from hospice because they couldn't pay? I know they are not in Las Vegas, or Flint MI or Detroit or Portland, OR but sure that leaves a lot of places it could happen. Thanks for the helpful hint, very thoughtful of you!
posted by yodelingisfun at 9:04 PM on October 17, 2009


When Kennedy was assassinated they brought him to Parkland Memorial Hospital with massive head wounds. A little while later his presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was brought to the same hospital with stomach wounds. They both died there, but I've wondered about the internal dialogue that happened... the complex balancing of Hippocratic oath with care and vengeance. If you believe someone is a horrible criminal, can you, as a doctor, be completely neutral in the way you treat them?

Jack Ruby died at the same hospital.
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:05 PM on October 17, 2009


Over and over again, stories about the prison system seem to show that once you're locked up for any time period, your civilian life is effectively over, that you can never really recover.

I think this is a really good point -- my family is acquainted with someone who was imprisoned falsely for murder and was exonerated after the actual murderer confessed. After having been released for a while, he set up a meeting to talk to a relative of mine who works in the justice system and has a lot of experience with current and former inmates. What this relative said is that it was interesting that his conversation with this man was the same as it would be with any former inmate, guilty or otherwise. It was clear that the guy really was just at loose ends; he didn't have a job, he'd lost his skills, he'd lost touch with his family, really everything had passed him by. Even without the stigma of guilt, he was completely at sea and pretty much unable to get over it or move on and build a life for himself.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 9:16 PM on October 17, 2009 [5 favorites]


I was going to chime in here with a version of Gandhi's quote
"The best test of a civilised society is the way in which it treats its weakest members."
when I got sideligned into reading the wikiquote.org historical discussion of this theme.

...

On the CBC radio, I heard a plea by a inmate to save the Canadian prison farm system.

Donny McGregor, who's serving a life sentence for murder, says he's not looking forward to the day the tractors and dairy cows disappear, so he's doing what he can to raise awareness about them now.

McGregor says working with cattle and being responsible for their well being has reawakened his emotions, letting him feel human again.

"It digs right at your heart, right at the core," McGregor said.


(Here's a National Farmers Union in Ontario petition to save it.)

I bring this up because it seems to be related to the nytimes article:

Mr. Lee said hospice was forcing him to learn to trust people.

“It’s helping me mature,” he said. “My views of life and death are changing. I was unsympathetic when it comes to death. I’ve had friends die, and I was callous about it. Now I can’t do that. I’ve come to identify with these guys, not because we’re inmates, but because we’re human beings. What they’re going through, I’ll go through.”


...

To return to baseline mefi-snarking, it would be nice if American prison guard lobbies were more oriented to 'correction' and schooling and less to criminalization. Then we might have more public funds for general health care.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:45 PM on October 17, 2009 [3 favorites]


Over and over again, stories about the prison system seem to show that once you're locked up for any time period, your civilian life is effectively over, that you can never really recover.

As Mrs. Pterodactyl said above, that is a good point. I do know some people who have gotten out of prison and done well as in getting a job, place to live, and in many cases trying to help people who were in the same position they were in. However they are rare exceptions.

Around here, due to a lawsuit and a loophole in the law, a bunch of folks with life sentences will be getting out soon. A court read the law to read a life sentence as 80 years, and with time off for good behavior some guys are getting out after 40 or so years. If you read the comments in the linked article, the state will soon be awash in septuagenarian serial killers. I believe now in this state life means life, these guys were sentenced under an old law.

From talking to and getting to know these guys, it is not all rapes and beatings. There are a thousand little things that dehumanize you every day, and they miss so many things I take for granted. I get to take guys out on passes to recovery meetings and sometimes over to my house. We went to a meeting at a church one time, and this guy shot toward the couch, sighed and sank into it and said "I haven't sat on a couch for five years." Another guy almost cried when I told him to help himself from the soft drinks in my refrigerator. He hadn't helped himself to anything in a refrigerator for 17 years. The guy with the couch was real happy to pet a dog one time too.

I think the experience fucks with you even if you are not a victim of overt violence while incarcerated.

Some ex-inmates are institutionalized, think they won't get caught this time etc, and soon end up back in prison. But a lot of them just need a break when they get out, a damn job, a kind word, keeping a promise, someone showing them some respect for maybe the first time in years or ever.
posted by marxchivist at 9:59 PM on October 17, 2009 [9 favorites]


The guy's only in for a 2 - 4 year sentence for passing bad cheques, and yet they won't let him out die in freedom? That's incredibly harsh and cruel, sadistic even (surprising? not at all).
That goes way beyond the punishment that a 2-4 year sentence is meant to deliver.
posted by Flashman at 10:04 PM on October 17, 2009 [3 favorites]


Seconding the quality of that excellent CBC bit on the prison farms.
The conservative government wants to can them because, they say, 'hardly any of the guys who work on them go on to become farmers.'
Like the responsibility, work ethic and sense of accomplishment these guys get through working on these farms doesn't count for anything.
posted by Flashman at 10:09 PM on October 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


A few years ago 60 minutes did a segment about how prisoners qualify for heart transplants, get on the list, get hearts and get transplants paid for by the prison system. Meanwhile "good citizens" not in prison can't get put on the list if they can't show that they have insurance or the means to pay for the transplant, afterare and the anti-rejection drugs. They had all sorts of examples of non-prisoners who needed heart transplants but weren't on the list due to lack of funds.

I cried for days afterwards every time I thought of it. The whole thing was framed as "why should these prisoners get heart transplants? That's outrageous!" and no one seemed to saying that rather than denying heart transplants to prisoners, the solution is to provide them to non-prisoners.

Maybe these prison guards should use their democratic rights (which I believe many prisoners don't have since the US disenfranchises felons) to ensure that their families are entitled to fantastic healthcare, rather than wishing that no one showed compassion to prisoners.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:17 PM on October 17, 2009 [9 favorites]


more 'out of control' than the NYC Teachers union

wendell, apology accepted. The UFT negotiates good contracts for their members. I don't get how that is fodder for a joke.
posted by mlis at 10:18 PM on October 17, 2009


But a lot of them just need a break when they get out, a damn job, a kind word, keeping a promise, someone showing them some respect for maybe the first time in years or ever.

Agreed. The emphasis should be on rehabilitation. A convicted felon who has served his time is stigmatized forever. Many states do not allow felons to vote, deny them the opportunity to obtain professional certifications, student loan eligibility is negatively affected. You would think that it would be in everyone's interest that society help these people integrate back into a life where they can work, be productive and feel good about themselves a little bit.

Restrictions vary a great deal from state to state. I have posted about this before.
posted by mlis at 10:52 PM on October 17, 2009


Just popping in to say that this is one of the best discussions I've read on Metafilter in a while.

A question regarding Mrs. Pterodactyl's comment: Can't a wrongfully imprisoned person sue the state for damages incurred by their incarceration? It seems that it'd be pretty simple to make the case that someone like the person in the example she gives would be entitled to some kind of monetary compensation to offset the resultant difficulty in finding gainful employment.

Not commenting on your friend specifically since I don't know all the details; just asking if such a course of action is common.
posted by hifiparasol at 10:56 PM on October 17, 2009


hifiparasol, regardless of reparations to the innocent, we need a correctional system that doesn't brutalize the guilty.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:04 PM on October 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


regardless of reparations to the innocent, we need a correctional system that doesn't brutalize the guilty.

I absolutely agree; sorry if my comment indicated my feelings were otherwise.
posted by hifiparasol at 11:06 PM on October 17, 2009


The UFT negotiates good contracts for their members...

Another example of why MetaFilter (and I specifically) need Sarcasm Punctuation; I was referring back to this MeFi post and the obviously political charges against the Teachers union, the opinion expressed not necessarily my own (I am quite far away from NYC, geographically and emotionally). But pre-emptive acceptance of my apology, er, accepted? I don't think I have ever been more off-topic, off-base and off-multiple-walls in one comment. I'll be quiet now.
posted by wendell at 11:16 PM on October 17, 2009


Maybe in your next post you can lead off with a bold sentence about how the people of Iraq have universal health care, but link it to an article about Abu Graib.
posted by Brocktoon at 12:03 AM on October 18, 2009


the prison system itself takes even one-time, stupid-drunk-high lawbreakers and turns them into psychologically shattered lifetime criminals with permanently broken lives. That's what the system does.

And what does it do to the wrongfully convicted?

I've been listening to back episodes of This American Life lately, and one of the themes Ira Glass revisits often is wrongful conviction. One of the things that strikes me as bitter irony is that a prosecutor who suborned perjury to get a false conviction is free and clear after five years, due to the statute of limitations, while his victim is locked up for life or executed.

Not that any significant numbers of prosecutors have faced any sort of censure for their crimes...for example, Ken Peasley, who suborned perjury to put three men on death row in Arizona, was, for that act of attempted murder, disbarred.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 2:28 AM on October 18, 2009 [2 favorites]


American prisons are home to a growing geriatric population, with one-third of all inmates expected to be over 50 by next year.

This is a bit like saying 50% of schools are below average. If the average life expectancy is 75, you might expect 1/3 of prisoners to be over 50, except that if prisoners are more likely to re-offend you'd expect more than 1/3.

Is life-expectancy lower in prison?
posted by jamesj629 at 3:15 AM on October 18, 2009


Rich people pay for hospice care. Poor people get free hospice care. But middle class people cannot use free hospice care since the government will take your property to cover the care, thus depriving your children of inheritance. So actually these services are a force against prevent social mobility.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:08 AM on October 18, 2009 [3 favorites]


In the US, if you are over 65, Medicare pays for hospice care. You don't have to sell your house first.
posted by marxchivist at 5:19 AM on October 18, 2009


Is life-expectancy lower in prison?

I would certainly hazard that the people who spend time in prison are, as a group, likely to be drawn from socio-economic groups which have lower life expectancy than the average.
posted by biffa at 5:51 AM on October 18, 2009


The article was wonderful, though the lead in was indeed totally misleading.

I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that the discussion over here is tending towards ugly. Of course, this is an article about a) health care, b) hospice care, c) prison, and d) was lead-in by the most "outrageous" quote from the article which was also the least germane to the actual subject matter. Slam-dunk for an ugly discussion of what is actually a fascinating and touching subject: prisoners working in hospice settings to care for fellow inmates.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 7:20 AM on October 18, 2009


My father is currently getting hospice care in VA and it is being paid for by Medicaid. I don't know all the little details, but they did not have to lose any of their other benefits or possessions to get this care. He has been on some really expensive medications lately and hospice is also covering the cost for him to continue to get these medications even though his Medicaid insurance is at its limit for the calendar year.

Don't know if this is typical or not, but that's been our experience with hospice and I've been very pleased with the care he's received. I would hope that anyone who needed similar care would have access to the same regardless of their socioeconomic status.
posted by garnetgirl at 7:43 AM on October 18, 2009


grapefruitmoon > I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that the discussion over here is tending towards ugly.

... so you would rather people just murmur platitudes and give gentle nods of assent here?

Nothing gets fixed if real feelings remain buried or masked. You can only address misunderstandings when they are revealed.

(my first metacomment on metafilter)
posted by Artful Codger at 7:51 AM on October 18, 2009


... so you would rather people just murmur platitudes and give gentle nods of assent here?

Is that the only other option? Seems like a false dichotomy to me. Really, whenever this is brought up on MeFi "Geez, can we all stop being so damned crabby" the response is "What? You want us to just smile and nod and mew like kitties?" No. I'd like to see actual discussion of the actual topics as opposed to throwaway oneliners addressing the most controversial statement in the whole piece (which, of course, is the lead in that the OP chose to use).
posted by grapefruitmoon at 7:59 AM on October 18, 2009 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: disappointed, but not surprised.


I'm with you, grapefuitmoon. The contrast of the FPP lead with the story is was what lead me into this discussion. I too, was hoping for a celebration of the small bit of sunshine into the horror of prison. But I get the sense that others were disappointed by what they see as murmurs, mews and gentle nods.

Is my neighbor's lawn full of weeds, or are his native plants beset by a plague of invasive grasses? All in your point of view, I guess.
posted by buzzv at 8:26 AM on October 18, 2009


And come to think of it, is this discussion thread peppered with apropos self-reflection, or is this too much MeTa in our MeFi?

/navel gazing
posted by buzzv at 8:32 AM on October 18, 2009


Well medicaid or if they don't qualify for anything else, there is a hospice fund that goes towards covering the uninsured. Oh yeah VA covers hospice as well. I often talk to folks where hospice is the first steady medical care they have ever had. We also have a fund to buy things like air conditioning or food or whatever for people who need it.

One of the true insanities of the American system-- and one that I am amazed that the Democrats don't make more of-- is that the *nonworking* poor have a pretty decent public health care system. It's just the *working* poor who get completely screwed. The working poor may indeed wind up poor enough to get hospice care-- but they have to lose pretty much everything or be over 65 (and not all people who are dying are old) first.

Regarding the age ranges in prison, yes, prisoners die younger for a vast majority of reasons, one of which has to do with the fact that most come from the bottom of the economic totem pole (poor people in highly stratified societies like the US have mortality rates 2-3 times higher from virtually all causes, regardless of national health care).

Second, the period of highest criminal activity tends to be from about late teens to to late mid 20's -- after that point, even most of those who *don't* get caught tend to start aging out of crime (in fact, as noted above, prison by damaging people can interfered with this natural process by making them traumatized and less employable). So, if you are having a lot of old prisoners, you've either made every sentence a life sentence in some way (and sending people back for even minor parole violations is part of this) or you have created such lengthy mandatory minimums or sentences in general that you are locking up lots of unhealthy people and being stuck paying for their healthcare in prison even though they are dangerous to no one.
posted by Maias at 9:50 AM on October 18, 2009


In Louisiana they make black inmates pick cotton by hand, and one of the punishments is being forced to soil yourself in front of the other inmates. If you refuse, the guards stomp on your skull until you lose bowel control. Other punishments include getting raped with a nightstick, having your jawbone broken out of your head, and being strapped to a cement slab and hosed with freezing water.

Louisiana also holds the record for longest solitary confinement at 36 years.
posted by hamida2242 at 10:01 AM on October 18, 2009


Wow, hamida2242, is that comment in response to something in particular about this article or do you just want to throw out some awful things about the LA prison system?
posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:05 AM on October 18, 2009


My uncle is serving a life sentence in federal prison and he is nearly 80 years old. He's been in prison since the early 1980s. He has been denied parole because he refused to admit guilt. But I can't imagine how he would survive outside of prison at his age if he were paroled.

(tangentially, my friend's husband spent 5 years in the same prison with my uncle and he is now a homowner, a dad and all around nice guy. I'm pretty sure having a supportive wife and an employer who rehired him after he got out were the main reasons he transitioned successfully to the outside world.)
posted by vespabelle at 10:10 AM on October 18, 2009


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