Just Some of the Problems That Plague the Prison Industrial Complex
Editor’s note: These short texts were submitted anonymously by an incarcerated Michigander.
As I sit and watch the deterioration of the prison industrial complex here in Michigan, I’m struck by how far it has fallen. While it has never been ideal, in the past it had pseudo ethics, morals, and values; since the advent of COVID though, the guise of stability has been stripped off, and what’s left is a construct in skeletal form that hangs over an abyss of instability teetering on the edge of collapse. While that is a great thing for the most part, it bodes bad for those of us still locked in its grasp.
COVID has taken away any scrutiny for anything that goes on in here, and it provides an excuse for all the fallacies now being perpetrated against those of us that are in here. They are literally closing prisons due to lack of staff, or opening prison units that have previously been closed to shuffle people around for lack of staff, and in their desperation to maintain the appearance of stability they are literally begging people to come and work for them: since that has become their main priority, no one is paying attention to the fact that the internal aspects of everyday living have fallen well beyond what is viable for health and safety, so those of us still here are left at the mercy of those who have no mercy in them.
A gruesome example of what I’m talking about is what happened to Chris Hannah, who had a couple of weeks to go before he was to be paroled. Mind you that we are in a specialized protection unit, and he had a cellmate who was doing a very long time and who was not mentally all there, one who had many requests from previous cellmates to be moved because of his violent demeanor. Anyway, Chris asked to be moved because he was not getting along with his cellmate—he called his mom and had her call the facility to ask that her son be moved, but nothing was done, and one sad day Chris’s cellmate choked him to death with an extension cord. People say they could hear him pleading with his cellmate to stop before he died.
After killing Chris, he put him in his bunk and covered him as if he was sleeping. Other inmates who saw what was going on say that before he put his cellmate in his bed, he dragged him to the door and was showing people Chris was dead, and inmates went and told staff what had occurred and they were ignored. Multiple rounds were made by staff and none of them checked to see if what they were told was true, until finally one of them did, and that’s when they discovered Chris dead in his bed and took the other guy to the hole.
The lack of concern and the negligence displayed in this instance, where those hired to maintain security and custody completely dropped the ball, is indicative of the attitude of those who are overworked due to lack of staff. Who do they take it out on? Us, that’s who. This man’s pleas were ignored on every level, and you can only wonder why a guy going home in two weeks was left locking with a guy who had an extremely long sentence.
This is just one example of the goings-on in our current prison system; there are many different instances like this, maybe not as gruesome but just as neglectful. Another aspect of this is the sad fact that when trying to get Chris’s name, no one remembered him. It has taken me months to get it as they try to sweep it under the rug. I didn’t know Chris personally, but I write this for him in an effort to ensure he is remembered, even if it is only in the annals of my writings.
As I sit and watch the stories shown on news networks about the Daniel Penny trial, I’m stunned at the fact that, because Daniel Penny is a former Marine, it somehow makes him a hero, and absolves him from murdering a Black man. They say that the people on the train said they felt they were in danger to the point where murder was an acceptable solution, which trips me out.
Did Jordan Neely touch or hurt anyone on the car? The video clearly shows no one was hurt or assaulted. Jordan Neely was just eccentric. Do you know how many homeless people have mental health issues? I ask myself, “If this had been a Black man who choked to death a white man would we be seeing this differently?” With the way current trends have been for Black men, they would have crucified him. A bigger issue though is this: if Penny is found not guilty, what kind of message are they sending to the rest of the world? A dangerous time for Black people!
The MDOC, in an attempt to make itself seem more humane, has made some changes to three policies that will make reformists feel that they have achieved something. Policy directives 05-01-100, 05-02-112, and 05-03-140 address classification, educational programming, and visiting, respectively. Prior to these changes, prisoners doing life couldn’t participate in core programming, i.e. violence prevention programs, certain substance abuse programs, etc.—these programs were dictated by prisoners’ earliest release dates, and they still are, but now lifers have an outside chance to get in on one or the other. The visiting changes that were made have to do with prisoners being denied visits for a drinking or making-of-drink violation: they now have stated that prisoners with those kinds of substance abuse misconducts will no longer be denied visits; they have stated that it no longer just takes one violation of any kind to restrict visits; and they have stated that they recognize how prior policy disconnected prisoners from loved ones.
These changes in policy, on the surface, seem to make prison a more livable place, but this is putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. I’ve been doing time for 36 years, and prison has affected me in a variety of different ways: it has desensitized me to others’ emotions, and it has created an every-person-for-themselves mentality. It retards social development, and, the longer you are here, the more deeply rooted these mentalities become. While prison authorities have made a smoke screen of the mental health programs, the therapists will tell you themselves that they have no power when it comes to dealing with prisoners’ issues: they are pawns regulated by security and custody, and, no matter the will of the therapist, they are only empowered to see if prisoners are suicidal or homicidal—that’s it. They give psychiatrists the power to prescribe medication—an adventure in and of itself. I personally have been a test dummy: I have been on over 30 different medications with different psychiatrists contradicting each other.
These are just some of the problems that plague the prison industrial complex. There are many more facets of prison that are built into the fabric of the prison system that haven’t been addressed, such as store prices going up at least two times a year while the pay rates have diminished—and they monitor what we spend money on and raise the prices on those items, price gouging our loved ones who send money. As for the current policy directives, it took them 50 years to make these small changes, and these were made to try and stay ahead of the legislation that is coming down to make these very changes. These are not prison officials who all of a sudden found their hearts—they were about to be forced to make changes. If we can force them to make these changes, imagine what we could accomplish with more pressure!
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