Prisoners of War in the Michigan Gulag

Aug. 21, 2015

“We will wage a war on drugs”.

— Ronald Reagan, October 14, 1982

“Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact.”

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“We should not tolerate conditions in prison that have no place in any civilized country … We should not be tolerating rape in prison, and we shouldn’t be making jokes about it in our popular culture.”

— Barack Obama, July 14, 2015

The US imprisons more people than any other country. Michigan spends more on prisons than on education. We cage humans as social policy.

Reagan’s “war on drugs” did to poor people what real war does – destroy infrastructure, maim men and women. We jail too many people for too long.

Right-wing politicians use imprisonment as the answer to poverty, mental illness, addiction… you name it. Taxpayers are stuck with the cost – the wasteful cost of warehousing non-violent people who otherwise might be sentenced to community service or rehab.

Cages are not for humans. Here are a few of the victims of the war on drugs:

Jeremy H, 17, was so scared he’d be raped in jail he hung himself.

Randy P, 20, arrested for drinking, was locked in solitary for 72 days; a jailer taunted him to commit suicide, so in despair, he tried; they cut him down after severe brain damage.

Larry J’s leg vein was blocked due to diabetes, which caused ischemic pain – crushing, unrelenting pain; his toe turned gangrenous, then his ankle reddened, then it moved up his calf. A prison guard found Larry writhing in pain in his cell; Larry begged for treatment for three months and got only Ibuprofen every other day. When he finally got to a hospital it was too late; they amputated his leg.

Scott W was sexually assaulted in jail; his PTSD is so bad he hyperventilates if asked about the assault.

We are not just beyond compassion. As a nation we have lost any sense of compunction.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling on prisoner care that was so embarrassing no justice signed it. Fittingly, an unsigned opinion dooming cast-off humans, the mentally ill, the unloved and the unlucky. The case is Stanley Taylor vs. Karen Barkes. Taylor, an inmate, killed himself for the same reason many do – anxiety, mental illness. Prior legal precedent required “adequate medical care” for inmates. The Taylor case, conversely, gave jailers immunity because they claimed they didn’t know, and had no duty to know that Taylor would commit suicide. The inaptly titled justices agreed: Adequate care doesn’t include mental health screening. There’s a clever syllogism – seek no illness, find no illness, bear no responsibility.

In the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s deinstitutionalization of mental health care in the ‘60s, jails and prisons have become our default mental institutions. Yet the court says they don’t have to care for the mentally ill. “Snake pits” are back.

Prison management is an industry. For-profit corporations run many prison services, but like any profit-based company, they often cut costs, cut medications, avoid hospitalization and, because no one cares about prisoners, they practice medieval neglect.

In Battle Creek, jailers watched all night as John S seizured, moaned, and rolled in his own waste like a kenneled cur. At 8am, a judge awoke and released John S on zero bail. They waited to bail him out before transporting him, so the county would not be billed by the hospital. By then it was too late; his brain had swelled fatally.

We who put mothers, fathers, sons and daughters in concrete boxes not fit for animals; we who industrialize human imprisonment; how do we seem to the steady gaze of God?

Civil rights law, back when this country had a sense of idealism, protected the poor, the downtrodden, the defenseless. The law expected compassion and penalized brutality. All that’s gone now; we are at war for fictional purposes.

When I visit a prison I swear I hear the echo of inhuman things being done to humans: rape agony, deranged howls, mindless muttering. The Michigan gulag is every bit as horrible as the Soviet gulag Solzhenitsyn described.

I had breakfast with John S’s sister, Rose, recently.

She is a woman of surpassing faith who always wants to pray for me.

Last week, I ate at my friend Wendy’s lunchroom. Her daughter hung herself in Grand Traverse County jail. Wendy planned to counsel a troubled young woman after work, hoping to save her from a similar fate.

Randy P died in the Michigan gulag. His brain damage required anti-seizure medication, but jailers substituted the wrong pill, so he seizured, bit his tongue in half, then choked to death on his own vomit.

Randy P’s family, like Rose, like Wendy, like others who have more faith than I can muster after a career reading clever Supreme Court decisions, accept injustice with a grace this nation doesn’t deserve.

The war on drugs, the war to defund social welfare, the war to demean the poor and needy – it’s all the same war, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we rebel, you and I?

Shouldn’t we do unto them what is right?

Please write your representative and demand an end to the war on non-violent drug offenders. Vote against jail funding every chance you get.

Grant Parsons is a Traverse City native and a trial attorney with a keen interest in local government.