Grieving Susan Lopez: Prisoners have families, too...

The following note was left this afternoon on my Prison Abolitionist blog, under the "comments" for the main post on the suicide of state prisoner Susan Lopez in March. An additional story was added by a prisoner who knew her on San Carlos, before ASPC-Perryville transferred her to a higher custody yard, Santa Cruz.

My condolences go out to Rick Lopez, Susan's and Rick's respective kids, and the extended Flores family; they've been through a lot lately.

"Prisoners have families, too."
Maricopa County Jail: Tent City.
April 5, 2011.

Left with Broken Hearts,


If only you would of known what a beautiful person Susan Lopez our daughter was, full of joy, she had the most sweetest heart, enough love for everyone, and now shes gone from our lives, but will live forever in our hearts, because of the prisons lack of medical attention our daughter is gone.


Whoever is responsible for the neglect of our daughter may god forgive you. you will have to answer to god, for all vengeance are his.


we love you Susan forever you will live in our hearts..............


love mom and dad :(

Rick Lopez at Central Property:
Retrieving Susan's things.
ASPC-Perryville
Goodyear, AZ
Apr 23, 2011

Surviving Susan Lopez: Mother's Day Grief.

One of the hardest, yet most profoundly meaningful, aspects of the work I do is to bear witness to the suffering of others and help them amplify their voices in any number of ways, in hopes that the rest of us are moved enough by them to change the trajectory we're on.


This is the grief of the parents of Susan Lopez, going into this past family-oriented weekend. Soon it will be their first Father's Day without her, each of her kid's birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the anniversaries of her birth, and of her death...

"When Jesus was a prisoner"
Matthew ch 25: v 35
Christmas, 2010
Phoenix, AZ

Rick Lopez and the Flores families have a difficult, deeply painful road ahead yet - all of the survivors of prison violence and neglect do. May we never again need to hear the grief of a mother who has buried her child in order to bring about a fundamental change in how we view and treat each other here, whatever our respective status or class...


Thank you, Sammy and Gina, for sharing this with us. Our condolences to the entire family.



-----------------left with broken hearts #2------------


A few years ago, my husband and I, together with Susan and her husband Rick, built a beautiful horse corral. I bought a mare, and someone gave us this big black gelding. Susan loved him. One day I went outside our 2 1/2 acre home, and I saw Susan on top of Moose, Rick leading the horse with a rope. I couldn`t believe what I saw, Susan riding Moose! She looked like a giant, but she was so happy, it seemed like nothing in the world mattered. Rick looked nervous, and would tell her "come on get down, get down!"

She loved horses like her mom. She loved cats, they were her life. She hated when anyone messed with them. She loved to look at the stars, and loved Jesus with all her heart. Our hobby was taking care of the horses; me and Susan would feed them and bathe them. I will always miss that...

From my horse corrals, about 4 miles from my back yard, you can see a hill with two giant water tanks. My daughter is buried on the other side of that hill. I am torn apart in my heart, its so hard to go feed the horses. Everytime I do, I see that hill, and I think of her. I break down crying; I'm torn apart. I then go to my front yard to sit on my deck. I look to the right and again I see the hill. I drive to town and I see the hill. It hurts, we loved her so much.

If you, the people working in Perryville prison, have any children then you know the love a parent has for their children, if you truly love them. I know me and my husband do; we loved Susan. And if you, the people working at Perryville prison, would have just listened to the cry of a wonderful woman, she may have touched your heart. And you might have change your ways, and done your job right. My daughter Susan would probably still be alive, that's what she was about. A beautiful woman full of love and kindness.

Again, whoever is responsible for the wrongful death of our daughter: God knows the truth. and may he find it in his heart to forgive you.

sammy & gina flores

(dad, mom)

Suicide Watch: Too many AZ prisoners dead.

Today is:

Suicides at the Arizona Department of Corrections, January 2009-July 2011 (Chuck Ryan's tenure):

Jan - June 2009 (5 suicides in 6mos):
Angela Soto (MexAmer, 28) Harvey Rymer (W, 33)
Angel Torres (MexAmer, 32) Dung Ung (AsnAmer, 32)
Caesar Bojorquez (MexNatl, 37)

July - June 2010 (9 suicides in 12 months):
Erick Cervantes (MexAmer, 30) Douglas Nunn (W, 33)
Hernan Cuevas (MexAmer, 18) Monte McCarty (W, 46)
Patricia Velez (MexAmer, 24), Jerry Kulp (AfAmer, 17)
Jessie Cota, (MexAm, 28) James Adams (W, 46)
Eric Bybee (W, 32)

July - June 2011 (14 suicides in 12 months):

Tony Lester (NA, 26) Robert Medina (MexAm, 29)
Geshell Fernandez (NA, 28) Patrick Lee Ross, (AfAmer, 28)
Lasasha Cherry (AfAmer, 23) Rosario Bojorquez-Rodriguez (MexNat, 29)
Duron Cunningham (AfAmer, 40) James Galloway (W, 54)
Ronald Richie (W, 42) Susan Lopez (MexAmer, 35)
Michael Tovar, (MexAmer, 20) Carey Wheatley (AfAmer, 49)
Michael Pellicer (AfAmer, 35) Luis Moscoso-Hernandez (MexNat, 28)

In the first 2 1/2 years of his tenure, Chuck Ryan presided over 28 suicides. That's almost one per month. During that time the prison population remained relatively stable - even dropping a bit last year. In the 2 1/2 years that preceded Ryan, under Dora Schriro, there were only 12 suicides - less than 1 every two months.

Additionally, both Shannon Palmer and James Jennings were murdered by their cellies because Shannon and James were psychotic and isolated with intolerant cellies (in Shannon's case, his cellie was also psychotic).

Most suicides occurred in higher security settings and isolation cells - as best as I can tell, all but one of the women who killed themselves in their cells were in some kind of solitary confinement.

Several things that I know of changed when Chuck Ryan took over the ADC that may have affected these outcomes. According to retired deputy warden Carl Toersbijns, almost immediately the policies for how to house certain prisoners together changed (two other prisoners - not mentally ill, were subsequently murdered by cellies), and a suicide prevention program that used prisoners as aides to help identify and support other suicidal prisoners was cancelled, despite the relatively low cost of the program.

I haven't cross-referenced the prisoner population by race and don't have some other stats for before Ryan took over. But the suicides that occurred on his watch are by and large young minorities. The white prisoners (and one African American) who took their own lives tended to be older men facing long sentences for violent crimes; a couple of pedophiles were among them. The youthful ages and minority status of the rest - and the relatively short sentences they had by the time they died - are quite disturbing.

From the data above, I would argue that the mental health of young minority prisoners seems to be taken less seriously than that of white prisoners, across the board. This is often the case in the "free world", as well - though on the outside, white males tend to have the highest, not the lowest, suicide rates. Minorities, by the establishment, are perceived as dangerous to others more so than to themselves, whether or not an individual's case or evidence exists to support that.

It is not uncommon, though, to find that many prison suicides are by individuals with a history of violence - at least two of the women who killed themselves had a history of assault in prison - which may be why they were in maximum security at the time they died. Unfortunately, maximum security means more isolation and restrictions, not necessarily closer supervision. Punishing prisoners by cancelling visitation and phone privileges seems like a set-up for more anti-social behavior, and undermines the rehabilitative process - two good reasons why the new $25 fee for visitors should have never been imposed, as it will cost prisoners a certain amount of community support and pro-social relationships (which are often so important to maintain to prevent further violence against others or oneself).

A significant number of the prisoners who suicided struggled with a previously-diagnosed psychiatric disorder. The prison psychiatric care is substandard, though, and access to the prison psychiatric facility where serious therapy is done is extremely hard to gain. Susan Lopez, for example, hung herself after two days of begging for help - including psychiatric hospitalization, and being ignored. That goes for most of the states jails, too. Just a week before she did herself in, Susan had been in the Greenlee County Jail where she was brutally strapped into a restraint chair by guards for being agitated on the phone and having a panic attack. She was sent to the hospital for unknown reasons soon after that traumatic incident.

I've heard numerous stories in the past year of how prisoners aren't getting their psychiatric meds, presumably because of the budget cuts. Tony Lester was off all his meds and getting psychotic when he cut his throat. Shannon Palmer and his cellmate, Jasper Rushing, were both seeking protective custody due to their paranoia when they were housed together, and neither - according to their families - were on anti-psychotic medicine at the time Shannon was murdered and castrated. The cell they were placed in should have only held two men for no more than 24 hours, because it was originally built to keep just one man in solitary. Instead, they were kept in that tiny cell together - without light or psychiatric care - for three weeks. When Shannon handed the guards a kite begging them to let him out of the cell with Jasper - just a day or two before he was killed - they simply laughed at him. That kite has not yet been found. I suspect this is typical of how the mentally ill in Arizona State Prisons are treated today.

Carl Toersbijns, the retired DW I referenced earlier, has done extensive blogging on the treatment of the seriously mentally ill in Arizona's Department of Corrections - check out his site here. He's also written quite a bit about alternative programming and policies that may hep reduce both the suicide and homicide rates among prisoners with psychiatric disabilities, while also improving the level of care for other at-risk prisoners. Before retiring, Carl worked in the Supermax, ASPC-Eyman, where many mentally ill prisoners are driven to psychosis and despair in isolation instead of being in a treatment setting; he knows of what he speaks. Unfortunately, the ADC seems to regard him as a traitor for his criticisms, and hasn't picked up on any of his suggestions.

In the face of the criticsm many of us have had about their suicide rates and psychiatric programs, the ADC released the following letter to the Mental Illness and Criminal Justice Commission defending themselves by minimizing our concerns and profiling a token program or two that few prisoners can even qualify for. See that memo here.

Read it for yourself, but there is no good explanation that I can see for why the suicide rates have skyrocketed under this administration - and since they fail to even acknowledge how much they are failing, I'm not optimistic that they will properly analyze those deaths and come up with more effective suicide prevention practices. Rather the memo justifies the policies and practices they currently employ, avoids confronting the possible reasons for high suicide rates, and attempts to marginalize the rest of us from the conversation as being ill-informed or even malicious. Let me remind folks that Carl Toersbijns has decades of corrections' experience, including extensive work with mentally ill prisoners, and is particularly familiar with Arizona's Special Management Units.


Finally, while the memo argues that Director Ryan implemented programmatic and staffing changes in 2010 to respond to the high suicide and homicide rates (which they wouldn't even really admit to), the data since then shows an even higher body count than before. And in no place in the ADC's response is there a satisfactory discussion of the mental health and treatment needs of women prisoners, who are the most neglected...nor does it explore the stats that concern community advocates by race, crime, custody level, or age. As long as they deny the problems they have delivering adequate mental health care to prisoners, they won't be able to effect meaningful change.

Therefore, as I've done so often lately, I'm urging readers - especially the survivors of these prisoners - to contact Representative Cecil Ash at the Arizona State Legislature. Representative Ash is chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, which seems to be the most appropriate place from which to organize a legislative investigation into the deaths and the poor mental health care in the state prisons. Ask him to convene legislative hearings into the state prisons (including testimony from prisoners and their families). The legislature has the authority to open an investigation, compel testimony, and bring many more resources to the table than those of us in the community can. Time is running out before the next prisoner takes his or her life, so please put the pressure on now. Rep. Ash can be reached at:

AZ State Legislature 1700 W. Washington St Phoenix 85007

Cecil's email address is cash@azleg.gov - but handwritten letters in the US mail make more of an impact - emails are too easily lost.

If you are the survivor of prison violence, then I'd also suggest that you try to make an appointment with him to advocate for an agency-wide investigation into the practices and patterns that are causing this level of violence and despair in our prisons to grow. He's a sincere man - very interested in the plight of our prisoners and their families - and will give you the time of day if he has it. The legislature's phone number is 602-926-5999.

Feel free to contact me with any questions - or even criticisms - regarding this post. Blessings and condolences to all of you who have lost a loved one to prison violence, abuse, or neglect. If you want to organize with other such families, please let me know.

Take care,

Peggy Plews
480-580-6807
prisonabolitionist@gmail.com

"Fight Real Power"
Sandra Day O'Conner Federal Courthouse
November 13, 2010 (Phoenix)

The Ghosts of Jan Brewer: Anthony Brown.

The Ghosts of Jan Brewer: Guerilla art installation, in chalk.

Arizona State Capitol Complex, Phoenix

(April 3, 2013)

In Arizona, prisoners are just commodities - interchangeable and disposable ones, at that. We have a criminal justice system driven by political ambitions and profit incentives to exploit the misery of those who are simply accused and the "duly-convicted" alike, bleeding dry their scapegoated families in the process. We do great violence to the lives of those people we incarcerate for non-violent offenses like property damage and theft, drug addiction, prostitution, and the symptoms of mental illness, simply by ripping them out of their families and communities. We then exile them to what is now known as one of the most deadly, horrifying places to do time for ones' crimes in the country - the AZ Department of Corrections.

The AZ DOC's reputation these days is well-earned. Not only has the level of despair and violence skyrocketed, they're facing a class action suit over the gross neglect of medical and mental health needs of all state prisoners. According to the suit, the mentally ill are commonly placed in solitary confinement or maximum security settings where they can be locked away and forgotten, left to contend with their psychoses  or extreme moods on their own. Most of those who kill themselves do so in isolation. Others, like Shannon Palmer and James Jennings, are placed while symptomatic with prisoners who can't tolerate them or are equally as disturbed and untreated, and subsequently end up assaulted or murdered by their cellies.

Prisoners like Nelson Johnson, who went on a hunger strike to protest conditions in the months before he died, are regarded as nuisances and troublemakers and frequently disciplined. Some are repeatedly accosted with pepper spray (according to family, Nelson had to be treated by paramedics after one such attack) and other coercive efforts to achieve compliance with orders being barked at them that they may not even have the capacity to understand, depending on their level of psychosis or their response to trauma. 

Suicide watch is more of a punishment than a therapeutic intervention to help prisoners stay safe - no wonder Susan Lopez went back to her cell and hung herself instead, when offered such "assistance". And it's unclear how much attention rape survivors get for their trauma - Duron Cunningham was sexually assaulted, then subsequently set up for an attack by a CO he complained about, and was begging the state to place him in protective custody when he died.

 "Empower the Ghosts of Jan Brewer" Guerilla art installation, in chalk.

AZ Alliance for the Mentally Ill Annual Meeting

Disability Empowerment Center, Phoenix

March 23, 2013

Four years ago this spring, soon after Jan Brewer became Arizona's governor and appointed Charles Ryan to lead the Department of Corrections, one of the most horrific cases of prisoner neglect occurred at the state women's prison, ASPC-Perryville, in Goodyear. The death of Marcia Powell was treated as an anomaly by the media - a freak event in which a mentally ill prisoner was locked, mocked, and ignored in a cage in the desert sun for four hours and sadly succumbed to the heat.  The community rallied to assure that her ashes had a final resting place outside of prison, then apparently forgot the other women left behind in that prison, even as some risked everything to send up smoke signals from the desert to get our attention. Few people outside of Perryville knew that Marcia was on a 10-minute suicide watch when she died, by the way.

Marcia's death came as a shock to prison administrators not because she'd been kept in the uncovered cage in the first place, but because other women had been kept in there for extended periods of time before without dying. Mentally ill or unruly women were often locked in there  as punishment, while staff "waited out" their resistance or other behaviors, according to prisoners. One woman had been waited out for 20 hours just a few days earlier and didn't die, Director Ryan observed.  The DOC's solution was simply to retrofit the cages with misters and shade, while the new governor and Director Ryan proceeded to gut the prisons of rehabilitative programs and lead the state in a direction of increasing callousness and brutality towards the state's most disenfranchised people: its prisoners. Nearly all the 16 DOC staff who were disciplined for ignoring Marcia Powell to death retained their jobs and none were prosecuted, though 7 were referred for criminal proceedings. The county declined to prosecute, stating there was "too much conflicting testimony" (prisoners v guards) to be sure of convictions.

Cowards.

I began investigating and documenting conditions in the state prisons soon after Marcia's death, and continue to monitor them. What seemed to be an exceptionally high incidence of suicide and homicides quickly got my attention, so I requested and analyzed the records of all prisoner deaths at the DOC from 2006 through the fall of 2010, when Shannon Palmer was so brutally murdered. I discovered that under Jan Brewer's administration and Charles Ryan's directorship,  the prison homicide and suicides doubled nearly overnight, and has remained that high throughout their tenure.  The assault rate skyrocketed, and detention cells are overflowing with men seeking protection from prison violence because the GP yards are being run by gangs and the Protective Custody yards are packed with those who have already escaped...though not everyone necessarily finds safety there, either. There are even race riots now.

The reasons for this have been hotly debated, with the state's narrative blaming a more violent prisoner population and too many staffing cuts under the previous director, among other things that aren't exactly true. Really, the most appalling cases of neglect occurring in our prisons is not for lack of staff, it's due to a pervasive culture of contempt for human life at the AZ DOC and the consequent gross breaches of duty. That applies to the deaths of not only Anthony Brown but also Marcia Powell, Tony Lester, Susan Lopez, Brenda Todd, Tom Reed, Ferdinand Dix, and so many more prisoners. The staff, it seems, are more criminal than those they are charged with caging and chaining every day.

This soul-sickness that infects the AZ DOC right now won't be healed by new suicide prevention training,  increasing the staff-to-prisoner ratio, or locking more people down in max and supermax settings. It requires new leadership which values the human rights of those who lives it is charged to care for, and embraces the rehabilitative responsibilities of the field of "corrections". Prison-based programs and interventions in the community should be proven effective in reducing both recidivism as well as the  harm done to vulnerable communities and populations by both crime and punishment in America today.  That is not the rule at the DOC - the Good Old Boys network of Chuck Ryan's mentor, former director Terry Stewart, is still dominant with Ryan at the helm now; their attitudes and methods of intervention with offenders are barbaric and archaic and ineffective, and it's time for that whole crew to go. Governor Brewer needs to put someone in there who can do the job right.

Thanks again to investigative journalist Wendy Halloran and Channel 12/KPNX for bringing Anthony Brown's story to light...

By Wendy Halloran 12 News | azcentral.com Sat Apr 6, 2013 2:42 PM

 

Attorneys for the widow and daughter of a deceased Arizona prisoner have notified the state that they plan to sue the Department of Corrections for $10 million.

Inmate Anthony Brown’s widow, Jami Brown, and his daughter, Jenna Jumper, contend that Anthony was denied prompt medical treatment after he suffered a skull fracture in October 2012 and bled into his brain after suffering seizure-like symptoms. He was incarcerated in 2005 and was serving a 10-year sentence for aggravated assault. The inmate was eligible for early release from prison later this year.

Anthony Brown was taking morphine prescribed by a prison doctor to help with pain from esophageal cancer. A notice of claim, filed March 29, said a nurse assigned to the Lewis state prison accused Brown of drug-seeking and faking pain. When the prison ran out of morphine on Oct. 4, 2012, the claim said, Brown was switched to a different drug, Lortab. Medical records indicate he began to exhibit bizarre behavior after the medication was changed.

Prison officials found him unresponsive in his cell on Oct. 7, 2012. According to Corrections records, when officers called for help, the nurse on duty refused to go to the cell. Brown suffered a heart attack and died the next day at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

A notice of claim is a precursor to a lawsuit, putting those named on notice that a lawsuit is intended to be filed in Maricopa County Superior Court. Those named include the Department of Corrections, Wexford Health Sources, which at the time was contracted with Arizona to provide medical care at state prisons, and Wexford medical staff.

Corrections officials declined to comment on the notice of claim. Wexford said in a statement issued Saturday that it was confident the company and its employees acted appropriately.

"And further investigation of this claim will demonstrate and prove the lack of any wrongdoing or negligence by Wexford Health," Wexford attorney Ed Hochuli said in the statement.

State violence is criminal damage, too.

Look what finally arrived - all that stuff from June's Artwalk night got kicked down to misdemeanors. There's more to come, though, I think. I've been trying to get the attention of the Superior Court justices, not these folks handling the misdemeanors. It hasn't been easy. Hopefully I won't have to commit more felonious acts of resistance to do so...





So, I guess my arraignment for this round of graffiti ("criminal damage") is September 13 at 8:45am. Come early if you want to help me chalk the walk - I'm working on a memorial to Arpaio's victims for the Municipal Court judges...

This is what it was all about, by the way...

Arizona Department of Corrections' Deaths in Custody:

Victims of prison violence/neglect
January 2009-June 2011

(suicide & homicide rates doubled under Director Ryan)

HOMICIDES:

Pete Calleros, Mando Lugo, Dana Seawright, Shannon Palmer, James Jennings, Alex Usurelu, William Gray, Ulises Rodriguez, Albert Tsosie, Sean Pierce, Jeremy Pompeneo


SUICIDES:

Susan Lopez, Tony Lester, Duron Cunningham, Lasasha Cherry, Geshell Fernandez, Patricia Velez, Angela Soto, Hernan Cuevas, Jerry Kulp, Robert Medina, Eric Bybee, Erick Cervantes, Rosario Bojorquez-Rodriguez, Douglas Nunn, Monte McCarty, James Adams, Patrick Lee Ross, Caesar Bojorquez, Angel Torres, Harvey Rymer, Dung Ung, Ronald Richie, Michael Tovar, Carey Wheatley, Michael Pellicer, Jessie Cota

Institutional INDIFFERENCE:

Brenda Todd, Marcia Powell, Tom Reed, Edgar Vega, Huberta Parlee


ACCIDENTAL DRUG OVERDOSES:

Pete Childs, William Engelbert, Santana Aqualais, Carl Cresong, Christopher Francis


STILL INVESTIGATING, at last word:

David Moreno, Gilberto Lopez, Luis Moscoso Hernandez

At the Mercy of the Court: Deaths in Custody.

This is an SOS to the justices of the Maricopa County Superior Court, which is filling the prisons with vulnerable people. Please contact the Department of Justice about a CRIPA investigation, or initiate an independent judicial inquiry into the doubling of the suicide and homicide rates over the past 2 1/2 years among prisoners of the Arizona Department of Corrections, and the neglect and abuse in particular of women prisoners. These folks should get you started; the list of the dead still grows...

Prisoner Names Project: Appeal to Justice
Maricopa County Superior Court /Cesar Chavez Plaza

Phoenix, AZ (August 21, 2011)

-------------

Arizona Department of Corrections' Deaths in Custody
January 2009-June 2011
(suicide & homicide rates have doubled)

HOMICIDES:

Pete Calleros, Mando Lugo, Dana Seawright, Shannon Palmer, Alex Usurelu, William Gray, Ulises Rodriguez, Albert Tsosie, Sean Pierce, Michael Pompeneo


SUICIDES:

Susan Lopez, Tony Lester, Duron Cunningham, Lasasha Cherry, Geshell Fernandez, Patricia Velez, Angela Soto, Hernan Cuevas, Jerry Kulp, Robert Medina, Eric Bybee, Erick Cervantes, Rosario Bojorquez-Rodriguez, Douglas Nunn, Monte McCarty, James Adams, Patrick Lee Ross, James Jennings, Caesar Bojorquez, Angel Torres, Harvey Rymer, Dung Ung, Ronald Richie, Michael Tovar, Carey Wheatley, Michael Pellicer


Institutional INDIFFERENCE:

Brenda Todd, Marcia Powell, Tom Reed, Edgar Vega, Huberta Parlee


ACCIDENTAL DRUG OVERDOSES:

Pete Childs, William Engelbert, Santana Aqualais, Carl Cresong, Christopher Francis


STILL INVESTIGATING, at last word:

David Moreno, Gilberto Lopez, Luis Moscoso Hernandez

-----------

To contact the DOJ:

Jonathan M. Smith, Chief
U.S. DOJ Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section
Patrick Henry Building / 950 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

(202) 514-6255
toll-free at (877) 218-5228
Special.Litigation@usdoj.gov

AZ DOC: Nobly, heroically, protecting us from the dying...

I find this kind of thing particularly disturbing because the AZ DOC blames the tripling of the assault rate and the doubling of the homicide and suicide rates on staff shortages. No one watched Dana Seawright's back - or Shannon Palmer's, or Duron Cunningham's, or Tony Lester's, or Susan Lopez', or Marcia Powell's - when they were alive in their care, but the state always has plenty guards and chains at the bedsides of the helpless and dying...

Immigrant Mother Asks Arizona to Let Her Son Die in Peace

Published April 03, 2012  | EFE

An immigrant mother is asking Arizona authorities to let her son die in peace since he is in the terminal phase of brain cancer and is kept cuffed to his hospital bed with two guards beside him.

"My son is dying, he cannot move and yet they're still keeping him handcuffed," Martha Elena Palomares, originally from the Mexican state of Sonora, told Efe on Tuesday.

Her son, Juan M. Corrales Palomares, 20, is hospitalized at Tucson's University Medical Center.

Corrales, a U.S. citizen, was serving a five-year sentence for possession of drugs and a firearm in Safford state prison when he began to experience severe headaches.

Palomares said she received letters in which her son complained of bad headaches, but she was still surprised when he called her last week from UMC to say he had undergone surgery on Feb. 29.

"He called me to tell me with his own mouth that he didn't know what was happening, that his head hurt him a lot. It was a nurse who told me that they had found some tumors and that it could be cancer," the mother said.

The doctors told her that her son, who is now unconscious, had terminal brain cancer, and they recommended that she disconnect him from life support when the time came, something that she refuses to do.

"What mortifies me is to see that they still have one of his legs cuffed to the bed and two guards are always with him. They don't allow more than one (visitor) in the room and they ask for identification to enter," she said.

"In the situation my son is in, I don't think he can escape, or that I can take him anywhere," she added.
Upon being contacted by Efe, spokesmen with the Arizona Department of Corrections explained that agency policy is to use handcuffs as a way to guarantee the safety of their personnel and of the prisoners.

Palomares also questioned the medical care her son received while he was in prison.

"I don't know what happened with him, someone told me that he had fallen inside there," she said.

Last month the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona filed a lawsuit against the state corrections department arguing that prisoners are not receiving the medical and mental care they need.

The documents presented to the court by the ACLU indicate that sick prisoners who asked for medical attention were told things such as "be patient" and "it's all in your head," or urged to pray for a cure.

"We're asking for several things, among them an order prohibiting the Department of Corrections, for example, from putting people with mental problems in isolated cells," Alessandra Soler, the executive director of the ACLU in Arizona, told Efe on Tuesday.

Cancer in Custody: Benny Joe Roseland, 59, is dying to save us money...

 UPDATE AUGUST 1, 2013:  Just sent this email out today...

Arizona Prisonwatch		Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:30 AM
To: CHARLES RYAN , Richard Pratt , abiggs@azleg.gov, dgowan@azleg.gov  Cc: jescamilla@azleg.gov, lotondo@azleg.gov, lpancrazi@azleg.gov, chcampbell@azleg.gov, David Fathi (ACLU National Prison Project), Daniel Pochoda (ACLU-AZ), Donald Specter (prison Law Office), Justin Scalise (Corizon Health), Jennifer Alewelt (Arizona Center for Disability Law), "Halloran, Wendy" (CH12/KPNX)

All four of you in the primary address here should be ashamed of yourselves for this prisoner's needless suffering and looming death - which appears to be due to a pattern of neglect over the course of Chuck Ryan's administration. This is why Parsons v Ryan is in play.

Sen. Biggs and Rep Gowan: a lot of people expect you to show some leadership and do something about Mr. Ryan and Mr. Pratt, if the good Governor won't. Someone else needs to turn that place around before we meet the next Benny Joe Roseland, or Tony Lester, Anthony Brown, Nelson Johnson, Marcia Powell, Forrest Day, Lasasha Cherry, Jerry Kulp, Ferdinand Dix, Carlo Krakoff, Huberta Parlee, Joseph Venegas, Brenda Todd, Susan Lopez, Jesse Cornejo, Daniel Porter, Duron Cunningham, Jesse Cabonias, or any number of Jan Brewer's ghosts whose wrongful deaths in prison I can detail for you, having read their DOC records and survivors' claims myself. The indifference some of them suffered was quite deliberate, and sometimes even criminal, in my book.

Sen Pancrazi and Reps Otondo and Escamilla: Please represent Benny's interests to the people responsible for his welfare, and make sure he gets the same palliative care you would want for your own brother or son if they were imprisoned in this place. I know his life gives something to your communities by virtue of being warehoused, and thus counted, in your districts. I honestly don't know if he has anyone else to fight for him. He can be reached at:

Benny Joe Roseland #124449,
ASPC-Lewis/Health
PO Box 70 
Buckeye, AZ 85326

I've promised Benny I will amplify his voice in the service of for those who will never be heard as they suffer and die, so we'll be posting from him to both blogs until he can no longer write to us. His death is representative of the "state savings" Arizona realizes by shortcutting on prisoner health care. Benny can be the poster boy for a campaign championing the "rights" of private corporations to profit from the erosion of our collective humanity in this state, too.

Mr. Pratt: I'd appreciate a run-down of what hospice services there are in your prisons, particularly those you plan to offer to Benny. Are prisoners trained to care for eachother, like some other state have done? They often care for their sick and dying anyway - might as well give them the right tools. And please don't let his pain meds get cut off again like everyone else's has been, or he might have to turn to heroin like the rest to self-medicate. Most prisoners can get a quick fix from the gangs more easily than tylenol from a Corizon nurse these days...but surely that isn't news to you.

Mr. Scalise: I'll be requesting Benny's records as soon as the ROI he wants to fill out is given to him and processed, which I'm sure the DOC or your company's staff will assist him with doing promptly.

Someone else please forward this to the governor - I'm not sure she ever gets my messages; I'm certain she doesn't want to hear them, though I would hope that she'd agree that it's not only more civilized, but also more fiscally responsible to assure that prisoners are offered a community standard of medical care from the moment they are committed to state custody, regardless of who signs their physicians' paychecks.

Especially in light of the Hep C epidemic behind bars and the numbers of seriously mentally ill people we have criminalized in AZ, responsible prison medicine is also essential for the sake of public health and safety. Since 95% of state prisoners eventually do come back to us, we'd rather they not  emerge from isolation cells in psychosis, or return just to die in our streets and expose the community to even more infectious disease.

Thank you all for your attention to this prisoner's basic needs and human rights. Gitmo has nothing on AZ DOC when it comes to deprivation of America's prisoners.

Regards,

Margaret Jean Plews

-------original post (july 27, 2013)------- 

. The following letter came to me recently from ASPC-Lewis/ Barchey Unit: this is what deliberate indifference at the AZ DOC sounds like, before the death notices are posted. Benny is soon to become another Ghost of Jan Brewer's...another human being whose life may have been saved, but for the contempt routinely shown prisoners by the state of Arizona.

The author is a long time correspondent of mine, and a reliable source of information. He's writing on behalf of fellow prisoner  Benny Joe Roseland, who wanted his story told so others may perhaps be spared similar suffering. Benny's experience is not uncommon, unfortunately, and spans the period of time when DOC was providing their own health care (when the class action suit over neglect was initiated), then Wexford, and now Corizon. 

Benny - thank you for this, my friend; your story will not be forgotten. I'm so sorry for what it cost you, though. Blessings to you for some measure of comfort and peace as you prepare for your final journey Home...

To friends and family helping loved ones in the AZ DOC fight for health care: See these blog posts below and/or contact Peggy Plews - I'm no attorney, but will  do whatever I can (480-580-6807 or arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com).

CORIZON:  FIGHTING BACK 

--------

Parsons v Ryan: Suicide Prevention Day, 2012, AZ DOC.

My young friend Davon Acklin is finally on interferon treatment at ASPC-Phoenix, which has been pretty rough on him. He's been covered with painful lesions for a week and can't get the medicated cream he needs to treat them. They did put him on a suicide watch when we complained about his lack of cream, however. We fear that's a pretext to justify terminating him from the HCV treatment program this week. 

Davon's adamant that he never said anything suggesting he was suicidal - nor did I. We're trying to get him off the watch now. Suicide watch in AZ state prisons makes people more likely to kill themselves, anyway, not less. Get it right, people.

Please think good things for Davon and his family; we are still at war with the DOC over his care.

remembering Susan Lopez, Geshell Fernandez, and all the other victims of suicide 

at the AZ Department of Corrections. 

The prison suicide rate has doubled under the Brewer administration, 

and is twice as high as the national average for state prisoners.

This is the state of suicide prevention in Arizona's Department of Corrections, under Director Charles Ryan. I hope the DOC responds to this critique with a detailed description of what else they're doing to reduce the rate of despair and violence that's driving Arizona prisoners to kill themselves at twice the rate than the national average for state prisoners. I want to know what the training consists of. So do the families who have already suffered a death in custody - as well as the loved ones of those mentally ill prisoners fighting to be safe and well in custody now. How have the conditions described below changed since Parsons v Ryan was filed?

If you have a loved one in prison with a serious mental illness whose safety or sanity you fear deeply for, please feel free to contact me. I'm just an artist and activist - I'm not a lawyer or professional anything, but I can refer you to resources in your community, and connect you with other families who share your struggle. 

Have your loved ones write me as well. 

Arizona Prison Watch  /  PO Box 20494  / PHOENIX, AZ 85036

thank you again to all the attorneys working on this case...but most of all, to the prisoner-litigants who had the courage to put their names and faces to the abuses and neglect going on behind bars in this state...

Peggy Plews 

480-580-6807

arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com

Parsons V Ryan (p. 47)

2. Defendants Deprive Suicidal and Self-Harming Prisoners of Basic Mental Health Care

82. Defendants have a policy and practice of housing prisoners with serious mental health needs in unsafe conditions that heighten their risk of suicide. In FY 2011, there were 13 suicides in ADC prisons, out of a population that averaged 34,000 during that time. That is a rate of 38 suicides per 100,000 prisoners per year, more than double the national average suicide rate in state prisons of 16.67 per 100,000. Three prisoners committed suicide in one week in late January 2012, including a 19-year-old woman.

83. One factor responsible for such a high suicide rate is Defendants’ policy and practice of maintaining suicide watch facilities that offer no meaningful treatment. Usually the only people who interact with prisoners on suicide watch are correctional officers who check on them periodically, medication assistants who dispense pills, or psychology assistants who talk to them through the front of their cell. Plaintiff Swartz did not receive psychotherapy for more than two months in the summer of 2011 while on suicide watch at the Lewis facility. After he swallowed glass and was taken to an outside hospital, the hospital psychiatrist recommended that he be taken to an inpatient mental health unit. These units are in the Phoenix complex. Instead, Mr. Swartz remained at Lewis where he continued to harm himself. He finally was moved to the Phoenix inpatient unit almost three months after the hospital psychiatrist had made that recommendation, but after a short period of time he was again returned to Lewis. Plaintiff Thomas did not see a psychiatrist for 11 months despite being placed on suicide watch multiple times.

84. Defendants also have a policy and practice of holding suicidal and mentally ill prisoners in conditions that violate all notions of minimally adequate mental health care and basic human dignity, and are not compatible with civilized standards of humanity and decency. Suicide watch cells are often filthy, with walls and food slots smeared with other prisoners’ blood and feces, reeking of human waste. Mental health staff show a lackof professionalism and little compassion for prisoners enduring these conditions: for example, prisoners in suicide cells are taunted for being in “the feces cells.” When Plaintiff Swartz complained to a LPN about the unhygienic conditions of the suicide cell at Lewis, the LPN described him in the mental health notes from the encounter as “bitching about cleanliness – germs and disease.”

85. Defendants have a policy and practice of keeping suicide watch cells at very cold temperatures. Prisoners are stripped of all clothing and given only a stiff suicide smock and a thin blanket, making the extreme cold even harder to tolerate. Plaintiffs Rodriguez and Verduzco report that the suicide smock used in Perryville barely comes to the top of female prisoners’ thighs, so both their legs and arms are exposed to cold air. Many prisoners are also deprived of mattresses and as a result must sleep on bare steel bed frames, or on the floor made filthy with the bodily fluids of prior inhabitants. Plaintiff Brislan spent several weeks in a frigid suicide cell with no mattress.

86. Defendants have a policy and practice of exposing prisoners on suicide watch to gratuitously harsh, degrading, and damaging conditions of confinement. Prisoners are given only two cold meals a day, and are denied the opportunity to go outside, brush their teeth, or take showers. The only monitoring prisoners receive in suicide watch is when correctional officers force them awake every ten to 30 minutes, around the clock, ostensibly to check on their safety. In some suicide cells, bright lights are left on 24 hours a day. The resulting inability to sleep aggravates the prisoners’ psychological distress.

87. Mentally ill prisoners on suicide watch complain of correctional staff behavior that interferes with any therapeutic effect of being on suicide watch, including harassment, insults and taunts, and the excessive and practically sporting use of pepper spray. Prisoners at the Perryville suicide watch units, including Plaintiff Verduzco, have jerked awake when awoken by staff on the “safety checks,” and are pepper sprayed for allegedly attempting to assault the officers. Guards in the Perryville suicide watch units also frequently pepper spray female prisoners in their eyes and throats when they are delusional or hallucinating. Plaintiffs Rodriguez and Verduzco have asthma and rely upon inhalers, and they have had asthma attacks from the regular use of pepper spray in the women’s suicide watch unit. On multiple occasions after she was pepper sprayed in the eyes, nose, and mouth, Ms. Verduzco was dragged to a shower, stripped naked, and sprayed with extremely cold water to rinse away the pepper spray; she was then left naked to wait for a new vest and blanket. A prisoner in the Florence prison’s suicide watch unit reports that while there he was handed razor blades to swallow by other prisoners, and told “just die right away.” He started to swallow the blades, and security staff pepper sprayed him while he coughed up blood, and did not provide other emergency response.

88. Defendants’ policy and practice of holding suicidal prisoners in excessively harsh conditions does not prevent but rather promotes self-injurious behavior. Plaintiff Brislan has cut himself numerous times with razors and pieces of metal while on suicide watch at multiple prisons, including Tucson, Lewis, and Eyman’s SMU 1 and Browning units. At the Tucson prison, staff put him on suicide watch in a cell with broken glass on the floor which he used to cut himself. During another stay in suicide watch, Mr. Brislan was given a razor blade that he used to deeply lacerate both of his thighs. While on suicide watch in the Lewis prison during the summer of 2011, Plaintiff Swartz, on separate occasions, swallowed multiple foreign objects, including two large staples, plastic wrap, a piece of glass, a lead-head concrete nail, a spork, two pens, sharpened paper clips, a metal spring, a steel bolt, and two copper wires. As with Plaintiff Brislan, Mr. Swartz’s repeated suicidal gestures and ability to access dangerous objects while on suicide watch confirms that he was not being properly monitored and that any mental health treatment he might have been receiving was inadequate.

89. Defendants also have a policy and practice of improperly using the suicide watch cells to punish prisoners for alleged disciplinary infractions. An Eyman prisoner who went on a hunger strike to protest prison policies, but did not display signs of mental illness or distress, was put in a suicide watch cell for several weeks and was told by a mental health provider, “If you weren’t on this hunger strike, you wouldn’t have to live in the feces cell.”

SOS: ASPC-Perryville Conditions of Confinement.

September 20, 2012 
PERRYVILLE UPDATE: 

My friend Christy, a prisoner out at Perryville / Santa Cruz, dropped me a letter late last week that just came in yesterday. It was dated 9/14/12. Here's the update:

"I was called up to the Deputy Warden's office to talk about my kites. Here is what has been done:

Water was turned down (hot water off)
Coolers were purchased but they ran out of money to install them so that is still a problem
I was given tape to tape my vent for roaches
the exterminator is supposed to come out & spray inside and out
the back window is still broken does not close (we have a bag with tape covering it)
they power-washed the showers 
we still only have 2 showers working - the lady who was fixing them was out here on 9/11...
the doors are still having to be keyed for a total of 48 rooms - that is a fire hazard!"

All that happened in response to earlier complaints filed by her and a few of the other women prisoners, and while I brought some things to the  DOC's attention a couple of weeks ago, this happened before I made the following post which had new information, so I can't really claim the credit for getting them to clean things up there. Christy and these women who protested their conditions of confinement have my respect for their courage and persistence.

I plan to organize a prison watching group for Perryville, soon, so stay tuned.


Peggy Plews

----------Original post (9/16/12)----------

I received this anonymous letter this past week from ASPC-Perryville/Santa Cruz yard, and have since challenged Richard Pratt, the Director of Health Services for the AZ DOC, to take the lead in cleaning up the place since so many chronically and critically ill women are trying to survive more than just their sentences under these conditions. I also asked him to set me up with a tour - suggesting we go together unannounced, if things are really as hunky dory at Perryville as they want me to believe. We'll see what he says once he gets a chance to respond. I'm probably now considered an external Security Threat Group leader, so my chances of getting in - sans the orange jumpsuit and chains the DOC would no doubt like to see me in - may not be too good.

In addition to the letter below from Santa Cruz last week, I received another one the week before from the same yard stating that there's a huge roach infestation problem that wasn't mentioned below, as creatures can easily enter through the cracks in the walls and window sills. 

Furthermore, I've been told by several sources that many women haven't been getting their medications for most of the time that Wexford has been in charge of medical services - that's been since the beginning of July. Hopefully, Wexford's brilliant administrators have finally figured out how to get their drugs to Arizona from Pennsylvania (or Columbia, or China, or wherever they're really importing their prescriptions from).

Also not articulated in the letter below is my concern about the high rate of suicide and deaths from sheer neglect at ASPC-Perryville. Most of those have occurred on Lumley yard, though, not Santa Cruz. Lumley is the maximum security yard where female prisoners who are seriously mentally ill, defiant, assaultive, or on death row are typically held in isolation cells. The ACLU's lawsuit Parsons v Ryan enumerates many of the additional concerns I have about the conditions of confinement and medical/mental health care for the women across the prison complex. Lumley is where Marcia Powell was killed by the desert sun after being left in an outdoor cage for four hours - theoretically while on a suicide watch.

I'm planning to set up a "Perryville Prison Watch 101" meeting this fall for community members who are interested in bettering the chances these women have of surviving prison and coming out able to lead lives as "responsible citizens" again; we aren't going to change any of this without help from more of the ordinary People out here who believe this kind of abuse and neglect - in our names, with our money - is unacceptable. And for Women's History Month in March 2013 we'll be celebrating the history of women's resistance in prison. Stay tuned for more on all that.

Remembering some of the women who have died out at Perryville, the following photos were taken from a mural laid out by community members in front of the Phoenix Art Museum for Prisoners' Justice Day in August of this year. Some things at Perryville can be fixed with caulk and elbow grease that the women would put into it themselves, given the right resources, but the culture of contempt for prisoners that fosters this kind of neglect is going to take a lot more to change.
 

Brenda Todd, 44. 
Victim of institutional indifference.
(January 21, 2011)

 

 Susan Lopez, 35. 

Victim of suicide and psychiatric neglect.

(March 25, 2011)

Marcia Powell, 48

Victim of a 10-minute suicide watch, bad policy, 

unconstitutional practices, and cruel and abusive guards.

(May 19, 2009)

-----------------received 9/13/2012--------------

"In the winter months, the heat is turned on by date rather than temperature. The heat runs full blast and the rooms get to be unbearably hot. The officers do not have the authority to turn the heat off, even if it is an unseasonably warm day. On a "warm" winter day, the room temperatures can reach the 90+ degree mark. The window cranks in most of the rooms are broken and do not open so there is no way to get any relief. This is absolutely cruel and unusual punishment.

In the summer months, the evaporative coolers or air conditioners are turned on by date rather than temperature. Some rooms have coolers, others have AC. In the early spring, the rooms are very cold. In the heat of the summer, when the humidity rises, the coolers do not work well. Once again the temperatures inside the rooms can reach the 90+ degree mark, with no way to get any relief. When the AC works, the rooms that have it are comfortable in the summer. The challenge is that they are often broken. As of this writing, the temperature outside is 113. The AC In my room and the 7 other attached rooms is not functioning at all. It has been out of service for the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I do not perspire very much. Extreme heat causes my muscles to cramp. I get very light headed and dizzy and ultimately vomit. I do not know if there is a medication of any kind of solution since I cannot seem to get to medical. Often we live in exceedingly hot, or exceedingly cold rooms with windows that do not open. Just another example of cruel and unusual punishment.

The Arizona sun can be punishing,. especially for those of us that have little or no tolerance for heat exposure. Lines for medical appointments, property pick up, state issue, and the store are often long. In the medical waiting area, shade and water are provided. Not much can be done to reduce the heat since the waiting area is outside. The wait can be several hours. The lines for property, state issue, and store are not in shaded areas. The wait is usually a couple of hours at best.

The mattresses in most of the cells are worn out. They are leaking black material of some kind. The coverings are cracked. The mattresses are thin and do not provide any kind of support or much protection from the metal bunks.

Many of the cells have cracks in the walls that leak rain water. In my cell, water seeps in only one corner so I am lucky that mine is not one of those that floods. However, in that corner mold is growing. In one of the rooms next to a shower, the mold is so bad that it is growing down the outside walls as well as the inside.

The showers leak gallons of water daily. Some of them have been leaking for years. The erosion of both the concrete and the metal support beams is clearly visible. I am not a building inspector, but I can clearly see that the iron railings and support beams are rusted clear through.

Hot water for showers is not always available. Sometimes we have no hot water for days at a time. When this happens, there is no hot water for washing the trays or kitchen utensils either. This has been an on-going challenge since I have been here (1997). Budgets were not restricted for the majority of those years so I find it difficult to understand the situation. The trays, sporks, and cups in the kitchen are frequently dirty. Dirt is actually embedded in the trays and sporks where the plastic coating has been worn away.

On 16 yard, dinner "sacks" are passed out at 5pm Monday-Friday. Breakfast starts being served at 8 or 8:30 on Saturday mornings. 15+ hours between meals. ON weekends, we are provided with breakfast and hot dinner, just two meals. The ladies from 14 yard walk to our kitchen and eat breakfast around 7am. The kitchen on 14 yard has been closed and the building has been condemned. At 5pm the ladies from 14 yard come to our kitchen once again for dinner. Our yard has dinner after all of them have left the yard. That is usually around 6:30 or so. For those that do not have money to purchase food from the store, it is a very long time between breakfast and dinner.

Adequate clothing is no longer provided. I waited over 6 months to have 2 pairs of panties that were lost in the laundry replaced. per policy, we are allowed to exchange clothing or linens once every 90 days. The challenge is that most of the time, state issue does not have the size or the items that are needed. On this unit we have been out of medium panties, small pants and medium t-shirts for months. When I tried to exchange clothing I was told sizes 3x were the only one available. I weigh 120 pounds! Incoming inmates are not provided with the policy-stated issue.

Each inmate is provided with 1 roll of toilet paper for the week and 12 sanitary napkins for the month. Further discussion of this is probably unnecessary."