Monthly Archives: June 2015

Please Call Regarding Complaints of Torture in Missouri

Trigger Warning (Upsetting Information is Contained Here) – medical torture in prison, psychological torture, insensitive language regarding mental illness – We have not heard from several prisoners that we expected to hear from over the past couple of months. This letter may explain why we have lost contact. Several points in this letter are corroborated by other people in the same facility.

Please call Missouri Inspector General Amy Roderick at 573-751-2389 (press 5 to get to a live person) and tell her office how you feel about the letter below.

Click here for a “How-To” video for calling prisons

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How to participate internationally: You can make an international voice call to the US very cheaply using google voice / hangouts. You can also email constituentservices@doc.mo.gov and ask for your message to be forwarded to Amy Roderick or you can write to her at: Amy Roderick Inspector General, 2728 Plaza Drive, Jefferson City, MO 65109. You may also email healthservices@doc.mo.gov or InspectorGeneral@doc.mo.gov

This is just one of many complaints of medical torture coming from Southeast Correctional Center in Charleston, Missouri…

Letter dated 05-28-15…

“All here that are extremely rebellious are being placed on what they call Wobble Head status. Socially and physically. They are just diagnosing people left and right to cram meds into them. They label us bipolar, delusional, manic depressant, schizophrenic, just plain crazy, so what we’re saying can just be dismissed as gibberish or crazy talk because we’re “mentally ill”.

Then the ones who are refusing to cooperate are being placed on forced meds and there’s no stopping that. [NAME] tried to refuse to no avail. A team was called and they forced the needle into him. Where’s the due process? Another offender, [NAME], the same way. The side effects are taking a toll. Some dudes can’t even read because their eye sight is out of commission, mind too discombobulated to even think clear to facilitate thoughts for cognizable letter to their family. Then not just the forced meds. They are making it impossible for those to contact family. All our property is being confiscated. What happened to the 1st amendment? Nothing. It’s still on paper but obsolete in the prison system because they will silence you.

Please share this letter with other orgs and send to officials as a means to get help with stopping these forced meds because we disagree with what they are doing. We’re mentally ill all of a sudden, but kept locked in ad seg behind box car doors.”

If after reading the letter above you are unsure what to say, please call and say “I have been made aware of allegations of medical abuse at SECC prison in Charleston, Missouri. I would like to request an independent investigation of the medical practices at SECC.”

Additional people we would are asking people to call:

Lisa Jones Constituent Services Officer 573-526-6530 Lisa.Jones@doc.mo.gov

Rep Brattin Corrections Committee, MO State Representatives 573-751-3783

Rep Paul Fitzwater Corrections Committee, MO State Representatives 573-751-2112

Rep Penny Hubbard Corrections Committee 573-751-2383

Health services mo doc healthservices@doc.mo.gov

General Counsel Matt Brieacher 573-522-1614

Deputy Warden Dewayne Kempker 573-522-1926

Major White 573-683-4409

MO Senator Doug Liblu 573-751-4843

Rep Holly Rehder 573-751-5471

Deloise Williams, RN, BSN, Associate Director/Health Services 573-751-2389

Jay Nixon Governor 573-751-2389

Rep Brandon Ellington 573-751-3129 Brandon.Ellington [at] house.mo.gov

Love and Struggle ♥

Update 6-10-15 ~ To everyone who has already called in about this issue, please also call the Corizon Compliance line and describe the conversation that you already had in regard to this issue. The number to call is 800-218-9114.

Here is a sample script “Hello, I called the Missouri Inspector General the other day at 573-751-2389. I called because I heard that prisoners at SECC in Charleston, Missouri are being misdiagnosed with mental illness and then receiving inappropriate medications. I am calling you to discuss what happened when I tried to call the state of Missouri to express my concerns”.

Update 6-15-15 ~ Please keep calling and writing. We have not received word from either prisoners or administration in regard to this situation.

Update 6-16-15 ~ Excerpts from a letter dated 06-08-15 from Shyheim D El-Mumin #509071 at SECC… I’m being targeted. I’m being denied adequate and proper health care in regards to my insulin. On 5/28/15 I was denied my insulin by Cody Stanley. I’m a diabetic who takes 70%30 mix which I have to take 30-40 minutes before meals. We eat breakfast around 5:30-6:00am and Cody Stanley brings my insulin every morning at around 3:00am. I filed an internal resolution request on nurse Donna Spaven as well. Lt Woolridge also has malicious feelings toward me. They are retaliating on me for filing IRRs. On 4-20-15 I blacked out and busted my head and was then shackled. The nurse then asked if they could place the hand cuffs on the front but Captain Clinton said no and I was in excruciating pain for 4.5 hours until Dr Birch finally got to the E.R. When I was finally removed from the strecher my wrist was swolen and bleeding and I couldn’t feel my hands and arm. On 5-29-15 I blacked out again, blood was still coming out of the back of my head. I had to forgo taking my insulin for a month from 4-28-15 to 6-4-15. Please let me know if you get this letter. Please call my mother. Please tell all your people to call all of the [numbers at the top of this post] and tell them what is happening to me.

Shyheim is a long time organizer, friend, and member of over a year and a half.

Update 6-24-15 ~ We still have received no word of any improvements in this situation. Please keep calling and writing.

WHY SHOULD FREE WORLD WORKERS CARE ABOUT PRISONERS?

WHY SHOULD FREE WORLD WORKERS CARE ABOUT PRISONERS? By Sean Swain

–While the majority of prisoners committed crimes to end up in prison, we have to keep in mind that the extremely wealthy who control the “commanding heights” of the economy have created desperate situations that lead to crime. Poverty, crumbling schools, widespread unemployment and under-employment– these are all conditions created by a maldistribution of wealth and power. Prisons, then, are a way to punish those without opportunities; prisons punish those effected w a free pass to the wealthy who are the cause of crime.

— While the vast majority of prisoners commit crimes to end up in prison, we also have to keep in mind that government has criminalized just about every human activity. The U.S. has more criminal statutes than any other nation in history. As a consequence, selective enforcement of these laws in poor areas where police are most heavily concentrated serves political, economic, and demographic interests totally unrelated to crime or crime control. The more “radical” element who may pose a challenge to the wealthy and powerful is silenced and neutralized while more wealth and power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

— The prison industrial complex has created a kind of “third world colony” right here in the United States. Prison systems outsource prisoners for slave labor to major corporations for pennies per day. Prisoners perform data entry and work auto industry jobs that used to belong to free world workers. The workers left unemployed become the desperate criminals of tomorrow, getting locked up and getting their old union job back… in the prison factory… for pennies per day…

–Those in prison today are your neighbors tomorrow. Freed prisoners won’t live in gated communities with Fortune 500 executives; freed prisoners move in next door to you. As a practical question, do you want a fellow worker with community activism and labor organizing experience moving next door and using those skills to create a functional life, or would you prefer a bitter, desperate, unemployable criminal with no prospects and little or nothing to lose?

— The modern prison system is the government’s “canary in the coal mine.” All of the strategies and tactics for surveillance, crowd control, and population pacification have been perfected on prisoner populations before being employed in the free world. Mass surveillance including centralized monitoring via security cameras and the collection of communications meta-data originate in prison; response tactics such as the use of tasers and pepper spray, “kettling” unruly mobs, and formations of phalanxes behind riot shields all arise from corrections applications.Even the use of torture was employed on prisoners before going mainstream. How authorities have pushed prisoners is soon how authorities push the workers. So, the conditions that prisoners are allowed to suffer today become the conditions imposed on workers tomorrow.

CONCLUSION

Personal feelings about crime aside, the interests of workers and the working class are bound together with the interests of prisoners. In fact, those who truly would like to see crime diminish should work for prisoner-worker solidarity, empowering prisoners and expanding the labor market, widening opportunities and prosperity that pose as a real alternative to crime.

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Please contact us today to find out how you can get involved. Let us know if you can:

* Add people in prison to our mailing list
* Write letters to people in prison
* Make phone calls to state officials
* Typing and transcription
* Research various items for people in prison
* Donate money and or writing supplies (stamps/envelopes/etc)
* Reach out to other organizations and ask them to get involved
* Make phone calls to friends and family of people in prison
* Be a personal advocate for an individual person in prison
* Collect art, pictures from magazines, etc for letter writing groups
* Write letters to state officials
* Research various aspects of the prison industrial complex
* Read letters and identify certain data for letter writing groups
* Ask your friends and neighbors to get involved
* Let us know your ideas!!