{"id":29921,"date":"2015-01-28T02:13:54","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T08:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/?p=29921"},"modified":"2015-01-28T02:13:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T08:13:54","slug":"report-blind-deaf-disabled-inmates-abused-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2015\/01\/28\/report-blind-deaf-disabled-inmates-abused-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Blind, Deaf, Disabled Inmates Abused in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Report: Blind, Deaf, Disabled Inmates Abused in Prison<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Maurice Chammah, The Marshall Project<\/p>\n

January 27, 2015<\/p>\n

An inmate sleeps in his cubicle in the geriatric unit of the Estelle Prison in Huntsville.<\/p>\n

The Prison Justice League’s Report on the Estelle Unit<\/p>\n

Floyd Blackburn recently included the following anecdote in a letter from his cell at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville to the Prison Justice League, a prisoner rights group in Austin: \u201cOne sergeant stuck his hand through the bars of my cell and hit me on the head and said, \u2018What are you going to do blind man? I will beat your blind ass.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Blackburn, who is 62 and legally blind, has served seven of his 15 years for burglary at Estelle \u2014 one of Texas\u2019 biggest prisons, with a population of more than 3,000 \u2014 where the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sends most of its oldest, sickest and most impaired prisoners.<\/p>\n

His allegations are included in a report, released Monday, that joins several lawsuits against the prison agency, contending that correctional staff at the Estelle Unit regularly neglect, abuse and even violently beat prisoners with disabilities, with little to no consequences.<\/p>\n

For the last six months, Erica Gammill, director of the Prison Justice League, and Brian McGiverin, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, have been exchanging letters and talking to dozens of men at Estelle. \u201cThe letters describe violent physical assaults by staff against blind, deaf and elderly prisoners, with a consistency that is deeply disturbing,\u201d Gammill writes in the report. \u201cThese unprovoked assaults have led to serious injuries, including missing teeth, busted skulls, broken bones, ruptured eyeballs and prolonged hospitalizations.\u201d Many of the men told Gammill that they had faced violent retaliation for filing official grievances in the past, and that now they were too afraid to do so. The prison agency declined to comment on the report or the pending litigation.<\/p>\n

The claims made in the report have been made before in other times and places, and they illuminate the issues of health and aging in prisons as longer sentences enacted in the 1980s and 1990s translate into a boom of older prisoners. Corrections officials are struggling to budget for medical care and geriatric services, while lawmakers have considered expanding parole for prisoners too old and sick to be dangerous in the outside world \u2014 and whose medical bills can be paid by family or federal programs.<\/p>\n

The stories coming from the Estelle Unit suggest that cost is not the only problem; these men are particularly vulnerable to neglect and abuse from staff. The clearest examples concern blind inmates, as seen in McGiverin\u2019s interviews:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re handicapped and they think they can get away with it, they\u2019ll slam you on the wall \u2026 they just aren\u2019t trained to be around anyone who is handicapped. They question your ability to see, question your ability to hear.\u201d \u2014 John Wesley Provost, 63, aggravated robbery<\/p>\n

\u201cOn holidays and weekend[s], inmates are not allowed to use the handicap showers. On those days the handicapped must shower with the general population and fend for themselves. I never understood how a handicap magically disappears on weekends and holidays. Mine never does.\u201d \u2014 Burnice Wilson, 54, robbery<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficers who have assaulted inmates can prevent them from filing grievances. You have to file a grievance within 14 days of the assault, but officers sometimes take an inmate to pre-hearing lockup for 13.5 days, so they only have half a day to file a grievance. Then they don\u2019t get the chance.\u201d\u2014 Daniel Webster Johnson, 56, possession of cocaine<\/p>\n

According to McGiverin, the blind prisoners worry about bugs and spit in their food. They find their hygiene products confiscated with no explanation. Their canes are broken and hands get stuck when the guards don\u2019t announce that doors are sliding open and shut. One man told McGiverin that the correctional officers \u201cdon\u2019t understand human dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the allegations go much further. Last June, a 54-year-old prisoner named Otis Talbert \u2014 who had been known for writing a lot of grievances and had assaulted officers in the past \u2014 was late to chow. An officer ordered Talbert back to his cell. Talbert jumped up in protest, and the officer punched him in the mouth with his keyring.<\/p>\n

A month later, said Talbert\u2019s sister Eva Gregory, five officers, including the one from the chow hall, entered his cell with a heavy motor they\u2019d ripped out of an industrial fan and pounded him with it. \u201cWe got a call [saying] he was beaten to death,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThey said an inmate did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talbert was transferred to a hospital and pronounced \u201cbrain dead,\u201d McGiverin wrote in a lawsuit against the prison agency. \u201cFor months, the doctors urged his family to take him off life support, saying he had no chance to recover, but they refused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Talbert woke up. He can now speak and read, but cannot move his body. He named several of the officers he said beat him up with the motor. None of them have been penalized. McGiverin believes that stories like this are \u201cinevitable\u201d given the \u201cpervasive culture\u201d of violence at Estelle.<\/p>\n

Lance Lowry, head of the TDCJ employee union, said that while use-of-force rates tend to be higher and harder to track at big units like Estelle, the problems there are the product of poor training, out-of-date infrastructure, understaffing and weak oversight. \u201cTexas requires correctional officers to only undergo 200 hours of training, while states such as California and Michigan have over 600 hours of training,\u201d he said. \u201cThe union is pushing for Texas to increase the required training of correctional officers and set correctional officer licensing standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Lowry, the needed reforms are many, but they all have a common basis: money. \u201cPrisons are not the most popular program to receive state funds, but are an essential part of keeping civilization civilized.\u201d<\/p>\n

SOURCE:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2015\/01\/27\/report-blind-deaf-disabled-inmates-abused-prison\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Report: Blind, Deaf, Disabled Inmates Abused in Prison by Maurice Chammah, The Marshall Project January 27, 2015 An inmate sleeps in his cubicle in the geriatric unit of the Estelle Prison in Huntsville. The Prison Justice League’s Report on the…<\/p>\n

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