MotherJones: My Four Months As A Private Prison Guard

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 07:15:05PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer


This is very long - a book. Here's one quote which comments effectively
on one of the major downsides or "human rights abuses implicit within"
private -for profit- prisons:


"
Three inmates pick up Mason in his sheet and put him on the stretcher.
His hands are crossed over his chest like a mummy as two prisoners wheel
him away.

Within a few hours he is sent back to the tier.
"They told me I got fluid on my lungs and they won't send me to the
hospital."

Days later, I see Mason dragging his feet, his arms around his chest. I
tell him to take my chair. He sits and hunches over, putting his head in
his lap. It feels like a "throbbing pain in my chest," he says. We call
for a wheelchair. "They told me I got fluid on my lungs and they won't
send me to the hospital," he says. "That shit crazy."

A nurse happens to be in the unit, passing out pills. I tell her they
keep sending Mason to the infirmary but won't take him to the hospital.
She insists "nothing serious" is wrong with him.

"When I saw him last week, he was almost passed out," I say. "He was in
a lot of pain."

She looks at me sidelong. "But the doctor still ain't going to send him
to the hospital just 'cause of that."

If he were sent to the hospital, CCA would be contractually obligated to
pay for his stay. For a for-profit company, this presents a dilemma.
Even a short hospital stay is a major expense for an inmate who brings
the company about $34 per day. And that's aside from the cost of having
two guards keep watch over him. Medical care within the prison is
expensive, too. CCA does not disclose its medical expenses, but in a
typical prison, health care costs are the second-biggest expense after
staff. On average, a Louisiana prison puts 9 percent of its budget
toward health care. In some states it can be much higher; health care is
31 percent of a California prison's budget. Nearly 40 percent of Winn
inmates have a chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease, or
asthma, according to Louisiana's budget office. About 6 percent have a
communicable disease such as HIV or hepatitis C.

IMG: Inmates line up for "pill call."

One day, I meet a man with no legs in a wheelchair. His name is Robert
Scott. (He consented to having his real name used.) He's been at Winn 12
years. "I was walking when I got here," he tells me. "I was walking, had
all my fingers." I notice he is wearing fingerless gloves with nothing
poking out of them. "They took my legs off in January and my fingers in
June. Gangrene don't play. I kept going to the infirmary, saying, 'My
feet hurt. My feet hurt.' They said, 'Ain't nothin' wrong wicha. I don't
see nothin' wrong wicha.' They didn't believe me, or they talk bad to
me—'I can't believe you comin' up here!'"

His medical records show that in the space of four months he made at
least nine requests to see a doctor. He complained of sore spots on his
feet, swelling, oozing pus, and pain so severe he couldn't sleep. When
he visited the infirmary, medical staff offered him sole pads, corn
removal strips, and Motrin. He says he once showed his swollen foot,
dripping with pus, to the warden. On one of these occasions, Scott
alleges in a federal lawsuit against CCA, a nurse told him, "Ain't
nothing wrong with you. If you make another medical emergency you will
receive a disciplinary write-up for malingering." He filed a written
request to be taken to a hospital for a second opinion, but it was
denied.
"