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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.”
VETERANS
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PRISON
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