Just Another Dead Inmate

The staff here screwed up the other day. An inmate had a breakdown on Friday while in his building. He was handcuffed, taken to medical to check him out, then dropped in “the hole,” isolation, and placed on suicide watch. That’s not uncommon in prison. Guy gets news from home – death of his mother, a sibling, or child, maybe finds out his wife is divorcing him and taking up with a new man – and he snaps because he can’t do anything else, and prisons have a way of breaking your psyche. Prisons make grown men weak. And weakness is preyed upon inside.

            So the inmate, having a fit and throwing whatever he can get his hands on, is tossed into isolation. Security protocol dictates that nothing be in the cell except basics: toilet paper, a small bar of soap, a set of sheets (of course, at another Virginia prison a few years ago, an inmate choked to death trying to swallow a sheet), and officer instructions to check on him every fifteen minutes. And that’s what an officer will do. Every fifteen minutes he’ll walk up to the door, peer in the window and through the metal tray slot yell, “You alright?” Then, he’ll log it in “the book.” Everything gets noted in the book, thick log books – dozens of them – in building booths and security stations going into program and vocational buildings. Every minute detail is noted in the book. Of course, it’s easy to fudge the book when you only check on someone every hour instead of every 15 minutes.

            All Friday night, into Saturday morning, night shift checked on the inmate and logged in “inmate alright.” Day shift arrives at 6:00 a.m. and shortly thereafter, breakfast trays are served back in the hole. The guy on suicide watch can’t be given a plastic spork or a hard plastic tray – after all, he could hurt himself with those things. He’s given a Styrofoam cup and a Styrofoam box holding his meal. The day shift drops it off then decides to let him eat in peace – or should I say pieces.

            See, the inmate ate Styrofoam cup and tray. By the time the day shift C.O. made his next pass through, the inmate was already blue and unresponsive. Per guys in the hole, the C.O.s hadn’t checked on him for over 45 minutes. An officer saw him lying face down on the cell floor. “Get up. Count time.” When he didn’t move, the C.O. called for backup. That took another ten minutes. A medical emergency was called and staff tried to resuscitate him. The compound shut down – no one moved in or out of any building – as the nurses wheeled him to a waiting ambulance for the short ride to the hospital and the official pronouncement of death.

            That’s when the fun really began. Medical shut down for the rest of the day. Officers on duty in “7 Bldg” – a/k/a “the hole” – had to be interviewed and log books verified. But, at the end of the day it’s just another dead inmate, just another law breaker who’d been costing taxpayers $25,000 per year. And in the schadenfreude society we live in, I’m sure a number of folks will say he was weak for killing himself, or created this situation by breaking the law. I just find it ironic that folks are sent to prison to become “law abiding” citizens and these prisons are nothing but dysfunctional, soul breaking zoos. Not really a healthy environment to rehabilitate in.

            Another dead inmate. It happens. It happens quite regularly. In this case, it happened to a middle aged son – and father of two children – who was suffering from severe depression. It happened to a man in the middle of a mental health crisis and correction’s response to that crisis was to throw him into a windowless 8 by 10 cell. And, I wonder if there needs to be a law against not giving a damn when you throw a depressed man in solitary? What do I know, I’m just another inmate.