9

Thursday, June 2, 2016

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com NEWS

building’s capacity has stayed the 
same. Gautz pointed to increased 
heroin use and a higher rate of 
women’s incarceration around 
the country for the rising number 
of Huron Valley inmates.

“Heroin usage has led to a lot 

of crimes women are committing 
to feed that drug habit, and all of 
our counties are sending more 
women to prison,” Gautz said.

However, Shecter, Steingold 

and a number of advocates 
underscored 
the 
vacuum 
of 

resources created by the influx 
of inmates as a greater issue 
than the sheer number of women 
housed in the facility.

“The state has abdicated its 

responsibility for these women,” 
Steingold said. “The fact they 
have to stand in long lines to 
get medications, some diabetic 
patients can’t access medications 
because of the long distances 
they have to walk … we’re talking 
about basic human needs.” 

Since 
2009, 
University 
of 

Michigan 
research 
assistant 

Lizzy Baskerville has facilitated a 
weekly acting program at Huron 
Valley 
with 
the 
University’s 

Prison Creative Arts Project 
(PCAP), which promotes artistic 
collaboration 
between 
the 

University community and the 
local incarcerated population. 
Baskerville noted the precarious 
state of female inmates’ mental 
health — roughly 20 percent of 
the entire U.S. inmate population 
is diagnosed with a mental 
illness — and argued poor living 
conditions exacerbate an already 
stressful climate.

“The 
suicide 
stuff 
is 
an 

epidemic,” 
Baskerville 
said. 

“Tensions are really high because 
they’re in such close proximity 
to other people. They mention 
often, ‘we’re all smiles in here,’ 
but outside, there’s tension.”

Furthermore, 
inmates 
face 

restricted 
access 
to 
medical 

treatment 
and 
educational 

services. 
For 
instance, 
454 

women 
are 
on 
the 
waiting 

list 
for 
GED 
classes, 
while 

1,151 women remain on the 
waiting 
list 
for 
vocational 

training — both numbers are 
the highest of any prison in 
the state. Ronald Simpson-Bey, 
a 
criminal 
justice 
advocate 

with 
JustLeadershipUSA 
— 

which is dedicated to reducing 
nationwide incarceration rates 
— and a former MDOC inmate, 
pushed 
back 
against 
state 

officials’ claims of a high parole 
rate at Huron Valley, saying the 
number of inmates that could be 
on parole is sizeable.

“There are maybe 400 or 500 

women that could be on parole 
but aren’t for having too much 
toilet paper — silly stuff like 
that,” he said. 

As the number of inmates 

steadily rises, the prison staff 
population is experiencing the 
opposite trend. More than a 
dozen Huron Valley employees 
have quit in the last six months, 
the Detroit Free Press reported 
earlier this month, and current 
staffers are consistently being 
forced 
to 
work 
mandatory 

overtime hours.

Gautz 
and 
other 
MDOC 

officials have confirmed the 
state is working on relieving a 
shortage of female correctional 
officers, but Steingold said the 

current state of the prison staff is 
unsustainable.

“There are guards there that 

don’t care, that hate what they 
do,” he said.

Bey-Simpson said there is a 

positive 
correlation 
between 

extreme stress on staff members 
and tension between inmates and 
officers.

“(Huron Valley) has been sued 

so many times they know how 
to not willfully neglect people,” 
he said. “These are frustrated 
people doing a stressful job.” 

Shecter’s lawsuit, then, is 

not the first legal complaint 
against Huron Valley — nor 
are allegations of overworked 
staff unique to this year. Many 
advocates view the facility’s 
current situation as a tipping 
point in a vicious cycle of prison 
overcrowding 
throughout 

Michigan. 
Despite 
the 
fact 

that 
the 
state’s 
corrections 

expenditures have risen only 
moderately in the last five years, 
MDOC’s funding has jumped 
from 3 percent of the state budget 
in 1980 to 20 percent in 2014.

Rosemary 
Sarri, 
professor 

emerita at the University’s Social 
of Social Work, conducted one of 
the first studies on Huron Valley 
after its opening in 1977. Sarri 
highlighted a tenuous history 
of 
women’s 
imprisonment, 

especially 
following 
the 

consolidation of four previous 
women’s facilities into Huron 
Valley in 2009.

“There’s a complete lack of 

funding,” Sarri said. “One in 10 
of children in Michigan have a 
parent in prison … incarceration 
in this state is futile.”

Sarri 
and 
other 
advocacy 

groups like the American Friends 

Service Committee are at the 
forefront of lobbying for reforms 
to the state prison system, but 
they 
complain 
of 
resistance 

from State Attorney General 
Bill 
Schuette, 
state 
officials 

and legislators. Schuette has 
publicly criticized bills revising 
parole procedures and minimum 
sentences and has linked the 
attempted 
changes 
to 
anti-

cop and anti-law enforcement 
sentiments. 

Bey-Simpson also alluded to 

long-standing internal inaction 
within MDOC.

“It’s 
a 
department-wide 

problem,” he said. “There’s this 
idea of ‘we’ll pay the fine,’ but 
this is still the way we’ll do it.” 

Gautz 
said, 
though 
the 

department has made an effort 
to implement measures such as 
drug courts — specialized courts 
dedicated to helping nonviolent 
drug offenders reach recovery 
and reintegation services — and 
boot camps, which are short 
residential 
programs 
similar 

to military basic training, state 
officials’ divergent perspectives 
are one of many obstacles in 
bringing 
prison 
populations 

down.

“We 
can 
have 
all 
these 

programs and find ways to 
divert people who have been 
put through the criminal justice 
system, but you have to have 
county judges that will send the 
women to those places,” Gautz 
said. “It will take a lot of work on 
our end to educate judges about 
this so that they feel it’s going to 
be a good fit for that individual.”

The need for more public 

education 
on 
the 
state 
of 

Michigan’s prisons is not limited 
to lawmakers. Though Huron 

Valley — the subject of so many 
debates over incarceration and 
inmate treatment in the Michigan 
— sits roughly 15 minutes away 
from the University’s central 
campus, Baskerville and other 
students 
involved 
in 
PCAP 

argued that incidents of suicide, 
disappointing prison conditions 
and 
mass 
incarceration 
in 

general are non-issues to the 
student body at large. 

Baskerville 
traced 
the 

University community’s lack of 
knowledge of the prison crisis at 
hand to issues of gender, race and 
socioeconomic status. 

“The fact that they’re women 

and the fact that they’re poor — 
it’s as much poverty as it is race — 
but we don’t care about women of 
color or poor women,” she said. 

LSA senior Elaine Chen, a 

PCAP facilitator with experience 
at 
Huron 
Valley, 
agreed 

students’ 
perceptions 
of 
the 

incarcerated population need to 
be shifted. When PCAP created 
a photography display of artwork 
produced by inmate participants 
last semester on the Diag, Chen 
said pictures were vandalized 
with cigarette burns, and some 
where even stolen straight from 
their frames. 

“This is the mentality we need 

to deal with,” she said. “There 
are students on this campus 
doing things that could get them 
behind those bars — mainly drugs 
— but we don’t see somebody as 
the worst thing they’ve done.”

Chen brightened, however, at 

the prospect of student action 
surrounding prison reform.

“Student activism absolutely 

has a place in criminal justice 
reform,” she said. “Connecting 
one-on-one is where it starts.” 

responsive to an essay prompt 
and how to write a coherent 
essay helps you anywhere.”

Brad Carney, a U.S. Army 

Ranger who served for six years, 
said the program helped him 
expand his educational potential. 
Carney will be enrolling at 
Dartmouth College this fall, 
hoping to study politics and 
governance.

“I didn’t think that I was 

competitive 
in 
terms 
of 

education; I didn’t think that 
I had the skills to go to a good 
school,” Carney said. “I got with 
a couple of organizations like the 

Warrior-Scholar program … and 
eventually I got admission into 
Dartmouth. I really discovered 
that I have what it takes because 
of programs like this.”

Dane 
Harvey 
has 
served 

in the military for 22 years 
and is leaving the service this 
December. His original plan was 
to enter the military contracting 
industry but has since decided to 
pursue higher education instead. 
He intends to study education.

“This is a good opportunity 

for me to brush up on skills,” 
Harvey said. “These programs 
have broadened my horizons 
and made me aware that I may 
be able to get into better schools 
than I was expecting to be able to 
before. It has been eye-opening.”

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