Catch, exploit, release:
How the prison system disrupts families
Wednesday, March 20. 2019 // The Statement
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Wednesday, March 20, 2019 // The Statement
A
s a wall painter in Allen Park, Ryan
Flores had been sober for over a decade
after his arrest in 2006 for possession
of cocaine and other narcotics. Through paint-
ing, he was managing to provide a steady source
of income for his son, Andrew. Andrew’s mother,
who also had problems with drug abuse, left them
both when Andrew was born. As Andrew’s pri-
mary caretaker, Flores was a constant presence
for his son. They went to nature parks, concerts,
restaurants — as his sister Stefanie Veselaneck
described to me, “They would do everything
together. … They were inseparable.”
“I was able to save money and I had a vehicle. I
don’t know. It was just a better life,” Flores said of
the years after his release. He managed to grow
his business and provide security for his son dur-
ing this time.
About 9 years later, though, in November 2016,
Flores was on his way to work when he got in a car
accident, totaling his truck and injuring his back
and wrist. The company that towed his car, West-
land Car Care Automotive, connected him with
the Southfield Pain Clinic, which would pick him
up from his home and take him to various clini-
cians and doctors to treat his pain.
One of the doctors he visited, Dr. Johnny Trot-
ter II, began prescribing him medications such as
OxyContin and Xanax to alleviate his pain, his
mother said. Flores disclosed his prior drug histo-
ry with the doctor. However, he trusted Trotter’s
credibility and took the prescribed analgesics,
despite OxyContin being a potent and addictive
opioid (Trotter has since been convicted of health
care fraud totaling over $28 million in cash and
property).
“That was probably one of the roughest times
I’ve ever had … I think a lot of it had to do with
the Xanax,” Flores said in a phone interview
from prison, referencing the prescriptions he
was given. “I mean I’m sure it was everything …
But like I was taking the Xanax and … the muscle
relaxers that were prescribed.”
As the opioid crisis has demonstrated, Oxy-
Contin and oxycodone, the generic form of the
drug, have also led people to turn to more potent
drugs, such as heroin and fentanyl. Soon after,
Flores began abusing his prescriptions, and when
he couldn’t receive any more, he started stealing
them. Months after the accident, he broke into a
home during a high stupor.
A week later, the police broke down the door
of his mother’s house where he was living and
arrested Flores, taking him away for questioning.
The effects of the drugs were still clouding his
judgment during the interrogation.
“I felt like I was going to die … There’s really no
way else to explain how that works,” Flores said
while recounting the arrest.
He was told the prosecutor would seek a life
sentence should he not accept a plea bargain.
Flores, still inundated by the effects of the opi-
oids, accepted the bargain. He was charged as a
fourth time habitual offender, despite not coming
into conflict with the law in over nine years, with
his other arrests occurring as a minor in 1996.
The plea and sentencing, which lasted a total
of 18 minutes, sent Flores to prison for a five-year
minimum sentence, mandated $3,700 in restitu-
tion and $1,300 in court fees. Veselaneck, a single
mom who works at the Rusted Crow Distillery in
Dearborn Heights, claimed the counsel was seem-
ingly uninterested in helping Flores.
“Obviously we don’t have the money, so (Ryan)
wasn’t able to go and get an amazing attorney,”
she said, recalling the trial. “So he had to get a
court appointed one and … they didn’t care.”
Her nephew, Andrew, claimed the lawyer said,
“He had two honeys waiting for him in Chicago
and he was just trying to get out for the weekend.”
In a letter Flores wrote to Judge Sean F. Cox, he
said one of his attorneys said he “just wanted to
get my arraignment over with.”
After the sentencing, the victim forgave Flores,
who showed immense guilt for his crime. Howev-
er, this was after the sentence was delivered and
didn’t alter his conviction.
Flores appealed his sentence, claiming his
counsel was ineffective due to the revolving door
of lawyers sent from the public defender to work
on his case and the waiving of a preliminary
examination. He also appealed the imposed court
costs of $1,300 on account of indigence, or extreme
poverty due to his lack of verifiable employment at
the time of the arrest. His appeal was denied and
his sentence was reaffirmed.
Flores’ appeals lawyer, Jayne Carver, spoke
with me about the nature of his sentencing.
“He did get a sentencing agreement. So he
actually was sentenced to lower than his guide-
line range.” She said that there is a “big however,”
which is called the “10-year gap rule,” where felo-
nies more than 10 years old cannot be counted as
habitual offenders.
“Unfortunately it’s from a discharge date of
his last offense until the commission of the new
offense,” she continued, “which in his case was I
think about 9 years. So, in my opinion, his guide-
line score was artificially inflated.”
His background is something that may have
come up during a preliminary examination. How-
ever, one of his court-appointed attorneys waived
the preliminary exam, which would have deter-
mined if there was probable cause to proceed to
trial, though it is unclear how much this would
have impacted his trial considering he admitted
to his crime.
F
lores’ case is an aggravation of systemic
issues facing working class individuals,
both in Michigan and the United States.
It is also, in part, an example of the opioid epi-
demic, which has ravaged communities across
the Midwest as pharmaceutical companies have
exploited people like Flores.
Heather Ann Thompson, a University of Michi-
gan professor in the History and Afroameri-
can and African Studies departments as well as
a Pulitzer-winning author for her work on the
Attica Prison Uprising of 1971, described how this
story exhibits the common practice of incarcerat-
ing people with substance abuse problems.
“Those who have run afoul of the law often do
so for reasons of health, you know, addiction, pub-
lic health reasons, not actual criminal justice rea-
sons,” she said.
In a study conducted between 2007 and 2009
by the U.S. Department of Justice, over half of
state prisoners and two-thirds of jail inmates met
the criteria for substance abuse or dependence.
This study was conducted prior to the current
opioid crisis and doesn’t take into account the
massive increase in drug abuse that ensued in the
years following. Such criminalizing policies also
disproportionately impact people of color.
Once the system ensnares people like Flores,
it exploits their families’ finances, as Thompson
described.
“It requires poverty to get into the system to
begin with,” she said. “And ironically, once you
get into the system, the one thing you need most
to navigate it as a family and as an incarcerated
person is money.”
Incarcerated people on average have a median
income of $19,185 prior to their imprisonment, a
figure that is 41 percent less than non-incarcerat-
ed people.
Sandra Parker, Flores’ mom, spoke of the myri-
ad of ways she is bankrolling her son’s health and
safety from outside the prison walls of the Cot-
ton Correctional Facility in Jackson. One would
assume the prison provides the items she buys
for Flores. But often, some of the necessities that
Parker has to pay for are not provided at all by the
prison. In the items that are provided, the issue
lies within the quality of the necessities they
are receiving. There have been several recorded
instances in Michigan prisons of maggots, mold
and “crunchy dirt” found in the prison cafeteria
food.
“Deodorant, toothpaste, soap, food, you know,
socks, underwear. And with the winter, we had to
buy him two sets of gloves and hats because they
get stolen. And (the prison doesn’t) care,” Parker
said. “A pair of socks is like $12. It’s like two some-
thing for one package of ramen over there.” A pack
of ramen noodles at Meijer is typically about $1.
There are also transportation costs. From the
area they live in to Flores’ prison, Flores’ sister
said that to drive, “It’s about an hour and 10 min-
utes maybe.”
She noted that her car’s low mileage usually
means that she has to refill her tank every time
she wants to visit him. Sometimes, because her
mother prefers not to drive on the highway, she
will drive her. And if they cannot visit Flores that
week, there are the costs associated with placing
calls and sending and receiving emails.
When I asked how much these expenses totaled
up to, she said some months it can reach up to
$1,300. This may also include copays to visit the
medical infirmary, which Flores says is usually
around $5 a visit for something as low-mainte-
nance as a headache. Flores said he makes just 40
to 50 cents a day in his GED course, making it dif-
ficult to pay for such expenses on his own.
Though Ryan has the support of his mother, for
others, not having family on the outside can exac-
erbate these issues. There’s also the concern over
paying his restitution, which is the recompense
that perpetrators are ordered to pay victims. This
is usually taken from the funds put in one’s com-
missary and wages they accumulate from the jobs
given inside prison.
This kind of spending strains his family’s
finances. Parker is a special education teacher at
the Creative Montessori Academy in Southgate,
and the items Parker mentioned don’t begin to
touch the payments Flores and his family will
have to make if he is released on parole.
Flores and his family’s pecuniary engagement
with the prison is not the result of his criminal
background (which is a non-violent one that stems
from issues with addiction, a health issue state
and federal lawmakers have a penchant for crimi-
nalizing). It is the product of a web of private
corporations capitalizing on families who try to
care for their incarcerated loved ones and is rei-
fied by state and federal policies. This engenders
an inter-generational struggle, creating a vicious
cycle of indemnity that can easily damage fami-
lies and communities.
O
n March 13, the Carceral State Project
hosted their fifth event at the Univer-
sity. The project, which was spearhead-
ed in 2016 by Thompson, brings the community
together to discuss the impacts of mass incarcera-
tion. At the event, the panel members discussed
how incarceration disrupts and destroys commu-
nities — for example, how children can be adverse-
ly affected through policies that inure them at an
early age to the criminal justice system. The panel
of five consisted of experts, counselors and com-
munity activists. This included Kathie Gourlay,
whose son had been previously incarcerated.
Gourlay and her husband, Don Campbell, who
are an older couple whose years are dense with
interactions with the criminal justice system, dis-
cussed the exhaustive list of costs associated with
supporting a family member in prison.
“We only went (drove) five and a half hours,”
Gourlay said, describing the weekends her and
Campbell took to visit their son, who was incar-
cerated in a prison in the Upper Peninsula. There
are 31 prisons in Michigan, holding more than
45,000 inmates. Six of those prisons are in the
Upper Peninsula, a far drive for most, especially
considering that the majority of crime in Michi-
gan occurs within the Metro Detroit area.
“And we’d have to spend the night and the
bridge is eight dollars to go over,” she continued,
detailing a trek that can be perilous during the
biting cold of winter.
“Not to mention the gas,” Campbell chimed in.
“So you’re looking at $50 to $70 in gas.”
And despite the extensive lengths the couple
would take, there was still the possibility they
would be denied entry. If a prisoner were to get
into an altercation, then they would be held in a
secure facility that has separate visiting hours.
This happened on one occasion to the couple, and
they were not informed of this until they arrived
at the prison, after preparing and driving for a
weekend-long trip.
“Once you’re in prison, they don’t care about
the family,” Gourlay said during the program.
“The only time they’ll tell you anything is if your
family member is almost dead.”
Later that week, I spoke over the phone with
James Dankovich. Dankovich is a chiroprac-
tor who is involved with several criminal justice
initiatives. His son, Chris, has been incarcerated
since 2005. He said there were several instances
in which he would drive over an hour to visit his
son, only to be denied entry because of a security
drill.
“Sometimes the facility will have what’s called
an emergency count, which means you drive all
the way up there to the facility and they won’t let
you see your loved one because they’re running a
security drill and they have a mandatory number
of (emergency drills),” Dankovich said.
The panelists at the event discussed how time
consuming these trips can be, especially for a
lower-income family who already has to set aside
money for such traveling. Often, this means a
prisoner won’t end up receiving visitors.
“We spent one full visiting day in the winter.
We were the only visitors,” said Gourlay, describ-
ing one particular trip. “There’s 2,000 prisoners
there.”
The emptied visiting rooms reflect the oner-
ous journey that hinders a family’s attempt to see
loved ones. One study by the Prison Policy Initia-
tive found less than a third of people in state pris-
ons receive visits from family or friends in a given
month. Another saw, among incarcerated people
locked up less than 50 miles from their home,
about half of them receive visits. This number
dwindles dramatically as the distance grows. And
arduous travel is just one of systemic factors that
separates families.
Several states have austere policies that further
hinder a family’s ability to visit, despite studies
demonstrating that visits and, hence, the mainte-
nance of family ties, serve as one of the leading
ways to reduce recidivism, or reentry into prison.
States such as New York are more lenient, permit-
ting visits any day of the year. Others are more
restrictive. North Carolina allows visits only once
a week. Beyond limits on number of visits, there
are also invasive policies such as those found in
Arkansas and Kentucky, which requires pro-
spective visitors to submit their social security
numbers upon entry request. In Arizona, travel
isn’t the only consideration made when visiting;
visitors must also pay a $25 background check fee
before a prison permits your entrance.
Some policies are so vague they can be inter-
preted at the whim of the correctional officer on
duty. In Washington state, a ban on “excessive
emotion” is a rule left to the discretion of officers,
meaning they can remove people indiscriminate-
ly.
Some states have begun reforming these poli-
cies, looking to close the gap between family mem-
bers on the outside and inside. While Washington
state is home to such unnecessary legislation, it
also passed the Family and Offender Sentencing
Act, which lets judges impose community custody
for primary caregivers of minors in lieu of impris-
onment — a ruling where the convicted spends
part of their sentence in the community instead
of in prison.
In Michigan, nonprofits have been taking up
the mantle where legislators fall short. Organiza-
tions such as the Oakland Livingston Human Ser-
BY JOEL DANILEWITZ, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL