Criminal medical neglect at Corcoran

At Corcoran State prison we don't have a 24 hour medical service. Just last month a dialysis inmate died. It was during first watch between 10:30pm and 6:00 am. Dialysis inmates go to the hospital on the streets three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to get their blood treated to clean out poison from their body. Dialysis inmates also get a special meal because they can't eat what the general population eats.

The dialysis inmate asked the floor officer to go to med-line because he was feeling dizzy. The officer wasn't familiar with dialysis (that's common in prison) and told him to wait until tomorrow because the medical treatment assistant wouldn't see him that late. The time was 9:45pm, 15 minutes until first watch, and the officer was tired and ready to go home. But that doesn't give that officer the right to deny any inmate his or her medical treatment. A couple of hours later they finally sent him to the med-line but there were no doctors there to treat the dialysis inmate so he died. Had somebody with knowledge of dialysis patients he would be alive today because all he needed was blood treatment because he didn't go to dialysis that Friday and it was Sunday.

-- a California prisoner at Corcoran, June 2004