ACA and DOC Affiliations: Conflict of Interest

Shortly after Clarke’s election as ACA president he loosened the already lax medical oversight and evaluative standards of county lock-ups by assigning the ACA as the sole evaluator for MA county corrections.

Since Clarke’s arrival in Massachusetts, prison wardens have imposed ever more punitive conditions, in contradiction to the 2003 Governors Commission on Corrections Reform recommendations. Prisoner health care is as deplorable as ever.

Selected recent “events” within the MA-DOC:

1) For three years Patrick, held at Bridgewater, has been refused tests to diagnose and treat a large lump on the back of his neck. He reports that the lump has lately increased in size and become painful and that more lumps are appearing on his body. Guards and medical staff stymie his repeated efforts to obtain care.

2) Last week elderly prisoner “Harry” lay “bleeding out” for hours in his bed at the MCI-Shirley Health Services Unit. Poor monitoring of his Coumadin (a blood thinner) levels nearly killed him. He was sent to the Intensive Care Unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His wife of more than twenty years was not told about this emergency. The DOC subsequently ordered B&W not to inform “Harry’s” wife of his status.  Her calls to DOC administrators, including the Commissioner, were ignored.  Not until the intervention of an outside watchdog, The Wrongful Death and Injury Institute did the DOC release documents detailing his medical condition to his wife as required by law;

January 2009--An Old Colony Correctional Center prisoner bangs on his cell door for thirty minutes for medical help. His cellmate cries out to the guards too. There is no response.  The prisoner is dead within the day.

3) In November 2008, MCI-Bay State Superintendent Corsini instituted a 9:30pm to 5:30 am curfew on bathroom access. Corsini easily obtained a waiver from Department of Public Health regulations to shutter a bathroom on each of its three floors during the night.  (Bay State has ‘dry cells’; the prisoner rooms cells do not have toilets.) Corsini has slashed visiting days and hours repeatedly. He ordered staff to remove seats and tables from the visiting area thereby deliberately creating overcrowding and causing loved ones to be turned away. Treatment of visitors has worsened.

We cite these examples as only the latest in a long train of rights violations. Whether or not you agree that incarceration creates more problems than it solves, people are sent to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment; anything else is extra-judicial.

If the U.S. is to stop military torture abroad we must acknowledge domestic torture and abuse on the local level. After all Clarke is part of the system that brought us Charles Graner, Lance Trotter, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, waterboarding and electric shock torture of civilian suspects, and sensory deprivation torture units. It is up to all of us to follow through and hold human rights violators and their collaborators accountable.

Please consider this information as you watch reformers and advocates, eager to build relationships with the DOC, disassociate from the systemic abuse in an effort to make mass incarceration more palatable.