Mass Incarceration Killing of Americans

Prison from NPR: When a prison sentence becomes a death sentence. I cannot help but make a few comments.

 At least 6,182 people died in state and federal prisons in 2020, a 46% jump from the previous year, according to data recently released by researchers from the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project.

"During the pandemic, a lot of prison sentences became death sentences," says Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that conducts research and data analysis on the criminal justice system.

Now, Jordan worries about his longevity. He struggles with pain in his legs and feet caused by a potentially life-threatening vascular blockage, and research suggests prison accelerates the aging process.

 I might be lucky. When I went into prison, I had COPD and sleep apnea and colitis. I bled internally, pain like a rat chewing through my guts was a constant presence. All that fed into and encouraged my depression. I stopped smoking for 10 years. The bland, overcooked prison food and the complete absence of caffeinated, carbonated, sugar water in my life (in before my life I drank a minimum of 6 liters of Coca-Cola a day. Escaping responsibilities reduced the stress that also fed my depression. The pain went away. So far, none of that has returned, but I am healthy enough to keep it away.

But I have to wonder this morning whether my current physical problems derive from prison as much as age.

A Senate report last year found the U.S. Department of Justice failed to identify more than 900 deaths in prisons and local jails in fiscal year 2021. The report said the DOJ's poor data collection and reporting undermined transparency and congressional oversight of deaths in custody.

Thousands of people like Jordan are released from prisons and jails every year with conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and infectious diseases they developed while incarcerated. The issue hits hard in Alabama, Louisiana, and other Southeastern states, which have some of the highest incarceration rates in the nation.

 For the longest time in my life, I have insurance. It is Medicaid now. (Or is it Medicare?) How much of the problem is tied to the American refusal to expand healthcare?

Mass incarceration has a ripple effect across society.

Incarcerated people may be more susceptible than the general population to infectious diseases such as covid and HIV that can spread to loved ones and other community members once they are released. The federal government has also failed to collect or release enough information about deaths in custody that could be used to identify disease patterns and prevent fatalities and illness inside and outside of institutions, researchers says.

Look, prisons are where we send the people the politicians tell us to be scared of. When I was in prison I got the idea that like we had put Indians onto reservations, the prison system served as a reservation for the lack and brown people, for those who had not lived up to the ideals of middle class life. Indian reservations also have notoriously horrid health conditions. Prisons and reservations also share the concept of out of sight, out of mind.

And maybe the governments of this country prefer it that way, that they do not want to admit their inadequacy, or is it they know the people of this country do not want to face up to what they have done to other Americans?

But a recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that 70% of the records the DOJ received were missing at least one required data point. Federal officials also lacked a plan to take corrective action against states that didn't meet reporting requirements, the GAO found.

The deficiency in data means the federal government can't definitively say how many people have died in prisons and jails since the covid-19 pandemic began, researchers say.

"Without data, we are operating in the dark," says Andrea Armstrong, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, who has testified before Congress on the issue.

Armstrong says federal and state officials need the data to identify institutions failing to provide proper health care, nutritious food, or other services that can save lives.

The Bureau of Prisons used to have menus featuring items like lo mein, or some other impressive sounding item. The lo mein was spaghetti noodles with what might have been (there is a reason for the term mystery meat) boiled ground turkey. Three words come to mind: greasy, watery, tasteless. The BOP publishes its menu online. The 2020 menu, is the last one I experienced and can be found here. The beef and bean burritos were the kind that you get from a vending machine. The lasagna was not bad - when it was served. The fruit might fruit cocktail - FT. Dix FCI tried every way it could to cut down on alcohol production, so they cut down as much as possible on fresh fruit - and then a few tablespoons only. The cheese pizza was usually the rectangular cheese pizza one got in high school. The pepper steak had no relationship with China - a lot of green peppers, some slices of beef. The roast beef was like slices of boiled shoe leather. I think I have made my point. Another inmate chided me when I said it was food meant to fill them up. This I will still stand by. It was not meant for an aesthetic experience. Tasting was not what I did: chew and swallow and hope to forget the experience within the hour. A significant proportion of the population ate out of their locker - they ate what they could buy through commissary and which they stored in their lockers. Here is the Fort Dix Commissary List, decide how much of it is all that healthy to eat on a full time basis. Food Service based its production on the assumption that a significant number of people would not be eating at the mess hall. This became obvious when commissary had been shut down for several weeks - food ran out for the last units to reach the mess hall. I thought it was better than nursing home food, but not as good as a high school lunch.

 Back to the medical issue. When I arrived at Fort Dix, during our orientation, the chaplain warned us against getting sick. A friend of mine died from bladder cancer while under the tender care of the Bureau of Prisons.

This is what mass incarceration does for and to people. This is the end result of being tough on crime.

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