Front entrance to the old Tennessee State Prison in Nashville, known as "The Walls", a maximum security prison with 800 cells built to house about 1600 inmates but bulging with about 2500 men in the 1970s. It has been abandoned for years in favor of smaller prisons, some privately owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), also based in Nashville, Tennessee.

When the state sentences a person convicted of a crime, that sentence can vary from living for months or years in prison under the protection of the custodial state, perhaps even with job training and education --- to living without protection, exposed to neglect, assault, rape or even being murdered by guards or other inmates. For example, when a judge or jury sentences a man or woman to say 1-3 years in prison, are they only depriving that person of their freedom or are they depriving them of their health, sanity, physical security or even their life? 35 years ago, if a prisoner was stabbed, clubbed or became sick at "The Walls", Tennessee's Main Prison, a maximum security joint in Nashville, he was treated by inmate nurses who had no medical training except for what they received from visiting physicians who came inside once a week to administer care and prescribe medicine. Even back then, the anti-Cuba, anti-Castro heat from Washington didn't prevent Cuban doctors, unlicensed in the U.S., from treating the poorest and most downtrodden in the United States. The State took advantage of Cuba's communist largesse even while working to overthrow their government. Where, anywhere in the world, can state-hypocrisy be compared with that of Washington! Rarely, only when someone was near death at The Walls .. and then - if he was white - and if he had the right connections -  he might be transported to the Baptist Hospital in Nashville for surgery or emergency care.

During those years I worked at the prison to support my family and to have my tuition paid by LEEP (Law Enforcement Education Program) as a young psychology student at University of Tennessees Nashville campus. I was sometimes assigned to "the pill bag", the job of administering meds orally and by injection to a prisoners who waited in a long line each morning for their drugs. Tom Sargent, a lifer and lung cancer patient, trained me how to give injections on the first morning I was assigned to the "pill bag", a large leather bag with a shoulder strap filled with medications for the day. The person dispensing medications was accompanied by a prison guard because of the frequent robberies by desperate addicts inside the prison hospital. The point of these stories is to raise questions about how much has really changed in U.S. prisons over the last 4 decades.

There were only a few school teachers and prison counselors who had college degrees at the prison but I was one of the very few in uniform who was attending university. Many of the guards lacked any education and some privately bragged about their membership in the KKK. Because I was a psychology student, I was often chosen to work the "Psych Ward". It was comprised of 2 corridors of 30 cells each at the rear of the prison hospital and occupied by the most piteous of the 2500 or so prisoners at the Tennessee State Prison back then. The tragic lives of men on the Psych Ward were generally considered to be lost, without hope of ever even returning to the general population let alone ever being released to the "free world." One of those men was William Weeks, a self-mutilator who had beaten his former girlfriend and man he found her with. They were white, important members of their East Tennessee community and they both survived the beatings. Bill received a sentence of 50 years in prison for each beating. I got to know him like the rest of the men in my daily visits to their 6X8 cells.

Bill began to mutilate himself after another prisoner stabbed him with a shank made in the metal shop when he was still living in general population. For his pain, doctors prescribed Talwin, a powerful analgesic as effective as morphine. He became hooked and when they cut him off, he "learned" the behavior of cutting himself to obtain more Talwin. In their abject ignorance and frustration with Bill, the prison officials required the doctors to prescribe more Talwin when his self-inflicted wounds became life threatening. Again and again he cut himself until his arms were so scarred that cutting had little effect so he began cutting his torso. Tools he could use for self-mutilation were taken away but he could easily buy a razor blade or piece of glass from another inmate by giving up one of his meals, sometimes with the complicity of a corrupt guard. Bill eventually developed a permanent, open wound that penetrated his digestive tract, near his navel. When working the Psych Ward, I would take him from his cell to the shower room each day where he would remove the gauze from the wound, clean it and repack it with a tongue suppressor and fresh sterile 4X4 pads. He would then eat his meal which would seep into the fresh packing, partially digested. Following his meal, I would take him back to the shower to clean himself and repack the wound. Visiting students from Meharry Medical College would comment in awe of his resistance to infection. Sometimes when the wound became too large, inmate nurses would come and sew it up again, without anesthetic - only to be reopened later by Bill when he demanded more Talwin. I once wrote Friend, my poor attempt to share Bill's life with others. Scenes and stories like this may defy credibility in the reader's mind but they have been taking place across the United States for centuries.

Bruce Dixon's article in the Black Agenda Report (below) tells us that nothing has really changed in U.S. prisons except perhaps that they've become privatized - meaning profit and money receive even greater consideration over inmate lives than they did 35 years ago.

- Les Blough in Venezuela

Medical Neglect Stalks Georgia Prisons
Black Agenda Report
By Bruce A. Dixon
January 5, 2011

Can't breathe? Crushing chest pains,... creeping up the side of your neck? See a doctor? In prison? Don't bet on it.

Arnold Porter was serious, and seriously worried. He was dizzy and short of breath, he told Dr. William Sightler, with a crushing, tightening sensation in his chest with pain shooting up once side of his neck. “Maybe I have a clogged artery. This is not my normal health,” he told Dr. Sightler. “Please help. I need something fast done.”

Slow motion heart attacks, in which symptoms leading up to full cardiac arrest build and worsen gradually over weeks or months are quite common. Porter should have been a lucky man, being able to bring his heart attack symptoms into in a physician's office, except for one thing. Porter was a prisoner at Georgia's Wheeler Correctional facility, operated by the notorious Corrections Corporation of America. And William Slighter was their doctor, not his.

According to a complaint filed in US District Court in Dublin Ga, Porter repeatedly and insistently sought medical aid throughout the month of December 2006, informing Dr. Sightler and a prison nurse of his symptoms, and urgently requesting some kind, any kind of diagnostic treatment for his chest pain, shortness of breath, profuse sweating and the other classic markers of cardiac disease. By December 29, the complaint states, Porter's symptoms were well documented in his file, but the first appointment with Dr. Sightler was delayed a full 35 days. It was at this appointment that Porter stated he thought he might have a clogged artery, and asked for help.

Dr. Sightler, Nurse Newcurt, and the prison's Director of Nursing Carolyn White, the complaint alleges, did nothing. Wheeler is a privatized prison, run by a highly profitable corporation. Private prisons, as well as publicly-run prisons with privatized medical care have built-in reasons to skimp on diagnostic testing and all kinds of care. Medical care costs money, and they're in business to make it, not to spend it.

On October 16, 2007 Arnold Porter went into full cardiac arrest. He died. His pulse and breathing stopped, he had to be brought back with a combination of electric shock and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Porter is lucky to be alive today. He's a long way from being well, but has made it far enough back to draft and file his own complaint against CCA, the state of Georgia, and the doctors and nurses who refused to treat him till he reached the point of death.

Porter's sister Vondra told Black Agenda Report that “My brother says 'they've already tried to kill me, I don't know what more they can do.'” So Porter is doing what he can do, acting as a jailhouse lawyer, researching and assisting with the pleas and motions of other prisoners at Coffee Correctional facility, where he is now held.

Some other Georgia prisoners are not so fortunate. Terrance Dean, who was brutally beaten by officials at Macon State Prison in mid-December, around the same time as the visit of a Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners Rights fact-finding team, finally got a visit from his sister on Sunday, January 2.

He's got a long way to go,” said Wendy Johnson of Atlanta. “He's in a wheelchair, his speech is slurred, and he seems to have partial paralysis in his arm and leg on one side. He can't walk without help... he is very fearful...” According to Johnson, the last time he saw his mother in November, he was in normal physical condition with no complaints.

Dean was transferred in apparent secrecy to an Atlanta hospital more than 130 miles away from the prison. His family was not informed at all by state authorities of either his injury or his transfer. They had to find out by other means. And although Johnson spoke to Steve Franklin of CBS Atlanta on Friday, the story appears to have received little or no on-air coverage, and cannot be found on the station's web site.

We're going to do everything we can to find out what happened to Terrance Dean, and everything we can to make sure justice is served,” pledged Rev. Kenny Glasgow of The Ordinary Peoples Society.”

At Smith Prison, where another fact-finding visit occurred, there was at least one incident which may be another case of official retaliation for the prison strike. The wife of another prisoner at that institution spoke to corporate media reporters just before New Years about her husband, whose nose was broken and not reset, and who had other injuries. Again, the story has seen little light, The family has retained an attorney and is looking into its legal options.

The Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoner Rights expects to hold a press conference in Atlanta tomorrow at 10:30 in downtown Atlanta. We'll be there.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Marietta GA. He's also a member of the GA Green Party's state committee

Source: Black Agenda Report