Under Lock and Key

Twenty-eight years in the Michigan prisons

As one having been on lockdown in Michigan's gulags 28 calendar 
years I can bear witness that health care provisions have always 
been a farcical sham. In the early 70s there was one medical 
doctor who oversaw all of Michigan's prisons. His staff consisted 
of unskilled kaptives that administered healthcare as the doctor 
directed. Many kaptives began filing lawsuits to improve overall 
conditions, and healthcare was number one on the list of 
complaints. The courts were slow in responding to our benefit, but 
eventually ordered that changes be made.

In the late 70s and early 80s, with the acceleration of prison 
construction and increased incarceration, the fascists in the 
state legislature concocted a scheme that would make it appear 
that they were complying with the court's orders. First, they 
allocated millions of dollars for medical services departments 
under control of corrections departments and hired several 
incompetent reject medical personnel to staff the departments 
under the control of corrections departments. All medical 
emergencies were contracted out to private medical care givers, 
State and County hospitals. Next, they instituted procedures that 
required each kaptive to be seen annually by a so-called doctor or 
physician's assistant (P.A.). They call you over on or close to 
your birthday and take your blood pressure and weight, ask you how 
you feel and give you a TB shot. They call you back in a couple of 
days to see if the TB shot is positive or negative and if its 
negative they send you on your way until your next birthday.

They also instituted a dental department where at first they only 
performed tooth extractions. After many grievances and complaints, 
they began to hire dental hygienists to help us preserve our teeth 
instead of having them pulled when they ached. They also began 
offering dental plates. Of course, there are exceedingly long 
waits between seeing the hygienist and actually getting a set of 
dental plates. However, on paper the system appears to be working 
like a charm.

Kaptives once could sign up daily to see the nurse, if they had a 
medical problem. If the problem required a doctor's opinion, the 
nurse would make the appointment. But as the prison population 
began to increase and become overcrowded, more and more people 
with health concerns entered the system which led to increased 
medical budgets. More money in the honey pot drew more flies.

In the late 90s the guvenor decided that too much money was being 
spent on prisoner healthcare. It was decided by the Michigan 
prisoncrats and state legislators that we kaptives must pay for 
our own healthcare. If we had no money in our accounts they would 
simply bill us until we had money to pay. They also eliminated the 
daily nurse callout and made it mandatory to fill out healthcare 
forms and mail them to the healthcare department. 

If a kaptive wakes up feeling ill s/he must convince a guard that 
s/he is suffering from a serious medical affliction. The guard 
must call the Control Center and get permission from the shift 
commander to call health services. If they receive permission, the 
guard calls healthcare and informs them that a prisoner is 
complaining about her or his health. If it doesn't sound life 
threatening a duty nurse tells the guard to tell the prisoner to 
"send a kite" and they'll put them on call for a visit to see the 
nurse. If the guard does not get permission to call healthcare the 
prisoner is out of luck. I've witnessed fellow kaptives toss 
themselves down stairways, or collapse on the prison yard just to 
get medical attention. The guards are most often insensitive or 
too intimidated by their superiors to strenuously advocate that a 
person be seen by the nurse or doctor.

Let's say a kaptive follows procedure and fills out a medical 
kite. At this kamp it takes a minimum of a week to receive a 
response to the request. The response will usually say that an 
appointment has been scheduled on a certain date. Then the kaptive 
must look for his name on the callout sheet, which is sometimes 
available at the guard desk. If you are on call but don't see the 
callout sheet and you miss the callout, you must begin the entire 
process all over again. No allowance is made for when the sheet is 
missing, which happens more often than not. Once you get an 
appointment, chances are it will be cancelled three or four times 
before you actually get to see a medical staff person.

In 1998 Michigan prisoncrats subcontracted health services to a 
private corporation, Corrections Medical Services (CMS). CMS is a 
notorious outfit with the blood of several kaptives on its hands. 
At first CMS just handled reimbursement to medical facilities that 
rendered healthcare treatment to kaptives outside the prison. 
However, in June CMS took over state employee positions and began 
to provide direct care to kaptives within the prisons themselves. 
The level of health care remains poor and slow. Just for the 
record, Michigan department of korruption pays CMS $64.67 each 
month for each kaptive in its system whether the kaptive is given 
medical care or not. That's 50,000 prisoners times $64.67 each 
month, you do the math!

We are no longer dispensed aspirins, cold tablets or other general 
medicines upon request. We are required to buy them out of the 
prison store or go without.

There is dissension between state healthcare workers and CMS 
operations. On June 19, 2000, a few state employees picketed 
outside one of the prison kamps in Detroit to protest an incident 
that occurred between a state worker and a CMS supervisor. The 
protest was not about the level of healthcare kaptives received. 
It was about positions and status within the system. State workers 
were feebly resisting the authority of the new regime. State 
workers' resistance to walk in lockstep with the new overseers is 
due to their reluctance to relinquish the power they once lorded 
over their fiefdom.

The only way to ensure improved healthcare for those of us on 
lockdown begins with our collective effort to elevate the 
awareness of so-called "freeworld" people as to the truth of 
what's really going on inside these crypts. I find that most 
comrades rarely inform their family members and friends on the 
outside about health care issues or other conditions of 
confinement. That has to stop.

Perhaps further advocacy can be pursued in the courts. What is the 
current law pertaining to the level of healthcare for kaptives in 
amerikkka's gulags? I believe we should agitate and mobilize 
around healthcare issues where it is possible. In the words of a 
fallen comrade: "The sooner begun, the sooner done!"

--a Michigan prisoner, 23 August, 2000 

MIM responds: While the u.$. Supreme Court holds that prisoners 
have a right to medical treatment, the standard of care is low. In 
Estelle v. Gamble (1976) the court ruled that prisoners have the 
right to be free of deliberate indifference to their serious 
medical needs under the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel 
and unusual punishment. "The standard of medical care is that of 
prevailing community standard. 'Mere negligence' or a 'difference 
of opinion' as to proper course of treatment are not actionable." 
A "serious medical need" must be "either diagnosed by a doctor as 
requiring treatment or ... a condition that even a lay-person 
would know needed medical attention."

"While some prisoners have won their cases in court regarding 
medical treatment (e.g., failure to treat an inmate with 
previously diagnosed cancer and refusal by the warden to give an 
inmate medication prescribed by the prison doctor) the courts view 
many prisoner claims of medical mistreatment as 'mere differences 
of opinion' between the prisoner and the medical staff."("End the 
Amerikkkan Lockdown," a RAIL pamphlet Winter, 1998, p. 3.) MIM 
seconds this prisoner's call that all those who are aware that 
this country is running a criminal injustice system should join us 
in the work of building public opinion in favor of struggles 
against this oppression.

The oppressed and exploited have a lot to be angry about. MIM's 
agitation often takes a harsh tone to correctly reflect this rage. 
As the vanguard, we take responsibility for setting the correct 
tone in our work, so that the oppressed recognize us doing genuine 
organizing in their interests. We urge all our readers to take up 
their own part in building our movement. Distribute MIM Notes and 
help get this news out to more people, contribute money, art and 
your own research and writing to our press. Relaxing our vigilance 
will never be justified until we have reached a communist society.

The Politics of medical abuse in prisons

The question of adequate medical treatment in state and federal 
prisons goes to the heart of the major contradictions facing our 
capitalist society. An enormous amount of money is being invested 
in prison construction and the hiring of prison guards. The claim 
is that the unimpeded construction of new prisons will solve 
society's criminal mentality. The prisons boom does not carry this 
problem-solving logic to the treatment and eradication of diseases 
associated with the imprisonment of high numbers of people. The 
commodified form of medical treatment in prisons requires that 
most ill prisoners should not be treated because it is too costly.

Consider the question of hepatitis C treatment, which is totally 
absent in Federal prisons despite the fact that it can be treated 
and completely eradicated from the system. The pigs know that 
hepatitis A, B and C are spreading in state and federal 
institutions across the country at alarming rates far greater than 
those disclosed to the general public. Some prisoners do not even 
know that they are infected with a deadly virus that can lead to 
cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer if left untreated.

April 18, 1995, the Bureau of Prisons control unit program was 
relocated from the United States Penitentiary at Marion, IL to the 
Administrative Maximum of Florence, CO. The mass transfer of 
control unit prisoners involved two air lifts from Marion, IL to 
Colorado that was the subject of bourgeois national news for 
several days. Before leaving USP-Marion all prisoners were checked 
by numerous physician assistants for any contagious disease. On 
April 18, 1995 I was x-rayed, diagnosed free of any diseases, and 
medically cleared for transfer and admitted to the new Alcatraz of 
the rockies.

In mid-May 1995, I knew I was in serious trouble physically and 
bedridden. I told the physician assistant on duty working the 
ranges that I had a severe case of hepatitis infection. On or 
about May 20, 1995, blood was drawn from me and the sample sent to 
the Corning Clinical Laboratory for chemical analysis. Later, 
laboratory tests performed by the Corning Clinical Laboratory 
determined that I suffered from all three strains of hepatitis, A, 
B, and C. Even though I suffered from a serious disease, the 
treating physician deliberately misdiagnosed a peptic ulcer and 
gave me a drug sold over the counter under numerous brand names 
labeled Ranitidine to alleviate the burning sensation of a liver 
being assaulted by a serious disease.

Control unit prisoners in federal prison do not have any physical 
contact with other prisoners. We are housed in single cells, food 
is delivered to the cell and any time a control unit prisoner is 
removed from his cell for any reason he is strip-searched by three 
guards armed with baton sticks, handcuffed behind his back, 
shacked and held by the handcuffs. In other words, I was 
deliberately infected with a serious disease in retaliation for 
suing the pigs for money damages and informed in threatening 
language of the reasons for the infection. 

The pig directly responsible for infecting me with hepatitis was 
rewarded with a promotion to the rank of lieutenant during early 
1997 by Kathleen Hawk, the director of the BOP. I filed suit in 
federal court and the judge presiding over the case quickly came 
to the assistance of the pig doctors even though the records of 
the case, including the doctor's own affidavit, disclose that I 
was never treated for hepatitis. The case remains alive and 
pending against other defendants.

The standard treatment for hepatitis infections involves a 
somewhat expensive two-phase treatment on a daily basis for six 
months or a year depending on numerous medical factors. As an 
initial matter the ill person is treated with daily injections of 
a protein-based drug known as Interferon. Interferon is a 
naturally produced substance in the body of a healthy person. Some 
medical reports appear to indicate that only about 15% of infected 
prisoners respond positively to Interferon treatment. The second 
phase of Interferon treatment combines it with Ribavirin, an anti-
viral drug that is likewise too expensive for the pigs to even 
contemplate supplying its antiquated medical practices. More than 
half of those infected persons respond positively to the combined 
treatment.

To my knowledge no federal prisoner has been treated for hepatitis 
infections because the treatment is too expensive. The issue of 
health care inside and outside prisons cuts to the heart of most 
major contradictions created by global capitalism. Capitalism 
invests huge sums of money in the medical profession and related 
areas such as genetic engineering, biotechnology, the production 
of certain drugs in the treatment of numerous diseases such as 
diabetes, tuberculosis, and AIDS. Yet the future of adequate 
treatment of human life under the commodification of science looks 
bleak. Very few practices of the pigs in the nations prisons 
expose capital's inhumanity more than denying its prisoner 
population adequate medical treatment for disease of their own 
creation.

The question remains as frequently reported by MIM comrades: 
whether a movement will emerge which can meet the brutality by the 
horns that contributes to bringing the beast running amok down and 
the creation of a new Marxist socialist society where the working-
class becomes the new ruling class and remains such until class 
structures as we know them begin to crumble.

-- a Federal prisoner in Colorado, 31 July, 2000

MIM responds: We do not believe there is any question about 
whether a revolutionary movement will emerge to replace moribund 
capitalism with socialism. The flagrancy of Amerika's disregard 
for prisoner life reveals all who support this country as enemies 
of the international proletariat. As Lenin instructed, our 
newspaper is a tool to induce people to think about things, "to 
summarise and generalise all the diverse signs of ferment and 
active struggle." Political work is begun with "live political 
agitation," in the form of a regularly distributed newspaper.(V.I. 
Lenin, "Can a newspaper be a collective organizer?" What is to be 
Done?, available from MIM for $5.) With its cardinal questions 
clearly defined, MIM stands firmly on the side of the 
international proletariat. As we continue our work in the 
interests of the most oppressed, all honest supporters of 
revolutionary politics will come our way.

Please write to MIM if you would like a list of the cases this 
prisoner referenced in writing this article.

"Have a drink of water" -- health care at Tamms

We need some serious assistance with the administration of Tamms 
Corruption Center on various issues such as medical, transfer 
procedures, grievances, and continued placements in such infamous 
concentration camps. I and others on the wing with me have 
experienced deliberate malfeasance in the Tamms Health Care Unit.

I've had abdominal problems since 1998, when I first started 
requesting to see a doctor about the problem. I was compliant with 
all procedures and medications that were prescribed (medical 
records would clearly substantiate my stance).

After being so compliant, I finally realized that the medical 
staff and doctors had prescribed every medication based on an 
assumption and not a thorough medical check-up to see what the 
problem is. They ask asinine questions, then tell you to drink a 
lot of water and you should feel better. If you're working out, 
they tell you that you're working out too much. If you're not 
working out, they tell you to work out and you should feel better. 
It's always some hypocrisy to avoid a thorough check-up, which 
would lead to them giving us the proper medications.

On assumption alone they have prescribed many medications for my 
medical situation. First Maalox, which didn't work; then antacid 
tablets, which didn't work; then Tagamet, which not only didn't 
work but made my medical concerns worse! Acknowledging this, I 
immediately stopped taking this Tagamet medication and clearly 
stated my reasoning to the pseudo-doctors and nurses.

I filed grievances, complaints, etc., and all went unanswered just 
as my sick-call request is being denied because they are calling 
me "non-compliant" for not taking medication that proved harmful 
to me and did not address the condition that they didn't even 
bother examining fully!

After my sick-calls being denied, I filed more grievances which 
have gone unanswered. They lie and say "we never got them." This 
treatment compelled me to hunger-strike for 10 days to compel the 
"Health Care Unit" to give me a thorough medical check-up. 
Needless to say, they still haven't done so, and my abdominal 
pains are continuing right up to this day, while the Health Care 
Unit continues to refuse to call me in or answer my request slips.

It is clear to me that the prisoncrats of Illinois have 
deliberately deceived society with a steady diet of hypocrisy, but 
one can only deceive for so long. I sincerely hope this brings 
some life into a movement against this corrupt administration, and 
shows what really goes on here behind the deceiving walls of Tamms 
Corruption Center.

-- an Illinois prisoner, 3 May 2000.

Prisoners: don't harass and antagonize each other

Now some of y'all calling fellow prisoners "bugs" and that's some 
shit y'all picked up from these racist dirt farmers. Some of our 
fellow prisoners are taking and addicted to some of these state 
drugs, unfortunately. These inhuman conditions are designed to 
dehumanize us, therefore, they, like we are not "bugs" but are in 
fact "political prisoners/prisoners of war." So when the brothers 
are in a state of rage, beating and kicking on doors, don't 
disrespect, harass, humiliate and antagonize them. Talk to them. 
Stop letting the pigs come and feel comfortable that they can 
discuss other prisoners with you, unless you're a pig -- pig 
lover.

--an Illinois prisoner, 16 May 2000.