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<p><font face="Calibri"><b><small><small><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/women-decry-deplorable-conditions-in-state-prison/Content?oid=3868191"
target="_blank">http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/women-decry-deplorable-conditions-in-state-prison/Content?oid=3868191</a></small></small></b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><b><span
style="font-size: 24pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Women
Decry Deplorable Conditions in State
Prison </span></b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><b><span
style="font-size: 18pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Former
inmates
at the Central California Women's Facility say they were denied health
care and diagnosed with diseases they don't have. A recent report backs
up
their claims.</span></b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><font
face="Calibri"><i><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">By <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/ArticleArchives?author=3868190"><span
style="color: blue;">Andrea Abi-Karam</span></a> </span></i><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><font
face="Calibri">When Theresa Martinez was an inmate
at the Central California Women's Facility, prison health officials
diagnosed
her as having HIV. Martinez said her mental health deteriorated as a
result.
Prison doctors also put her on a rigorous anti-HIV drug regimen for ten
years.
Eventually, officials with the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation transferred her to a state prison facility in Southern
California.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Once
there, the facility's health
staffers urged Martinez to take another HIV test, even though she had
assured
them that she was infected with the virus. The results came back
negative. They
did the test again. It was negative, again. She didn't have HIV.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Martinez
said she later learned that
the Central California Women's Facility, where she and many other East
Bay
women end up when they're sentenced to prison, had a contract with a
pharmaceutical company that sells HIV medication. Martinez, who now
works for
the Oakland-based prisoners' rights group Justice Now, shared the story
of what
happened to her at a recent public event. She contends that
corporate-driven
interests affect the physical and mental health of prisoners throughout
the
California prison system.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">There's
also compelling evidence
that the health facility within the Central California Women's Facility
(CCWF)
in Chowchilla has a history of badly mistreating female prisoners. Late
last
year, a three-person panel of court-appointed medical experts released
a
scathing report on the deplorable conditions inside the prison.
Overall, the
panel found that CCWF "is not providing adequate medical care, and that
there are systemic issues resulting in preventable morbidity and
mortality
[disease and death] that present an ongoing serious risk of harm to
patients."</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
57-page report, which didn't receive
much press coverage, also stated that CCWF's health facility is
disorganized
and overcrowded. "We believe that the majority of problems are
attributable to overcrowding, insufficient health care staffing and
inadequate
medical bed space," the report stated.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
court-ordered health care
evaluation came in response to a January 2013 report conducted by
Governor
Jerry Brown's office that declared the health care conditions at CCWF
improved.
The dismal quality of health care inside California's prisons was the
driving
force behind orders issued by federal judges to the state to
dramatically
reduce its inmate population. "Overcrowding and health care conditions
cited by this Court to support its population reduction order are now a
distant
memory," Brown's office stated.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Despite
the scathing report on CCWF
by court-appointed medical experts, federal judges agreed last month to
give
Brown and state corrections officials more time to relieve overcrowding
in
California's prisons.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
overcrowded conditions at CCWF
worsened in 2012 when the state converted Valley State Prison for Women
(which
is located near CCWF) into a men's facility and then funneled that
facility's
female prisoners into CCWF and the California Institution for Women
near Chino.
CCWF's inmate population quickly grew to 184 percent of capacity.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">According
to the court-appointed
medical experts, the packed conditions at CCWF resulted in health care
staff
being slow to respond to inmates' medical needs.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">"I
would assume that during an
emergency you would run toward the emergency, but no, 95 percent of the
time
they walk — stroll," said Mianta McKnight, a former Brisbane resident
who
was released from CCWF three months ago and currently resides at a
prisoner
re-entry facility on Treasure Island.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">McKnight
told me that when nurses at
CCWF respond to an emergency, they'll only provide care if the patient
is
incoherent and can't stand up. She described an instance in which her
roommate
was waiting to get treatment for an earache. The pain became so
intense, she
passed out and hit her head on her bunk. "She was trying to be seen and
was ignored," McKnight said.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And
even if a prisoner does get seen
by health care staffers at CCWF, there's a good chance she won't get
appropriate care. According to the court-ordered report, as well as
first-hand
accounts, CCWF medical staffers routinely prescribe expired, incorrect,
or
insufficient medication.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">"You
go in and say, 'I don't
feel well because XYZ,'" McKnight said. "They'll give you a cold pack
and you may have a migraine."</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Inmates
also "were given the
wrong medications at times — kind of like test this and see if it works
and if
it doesn't work we'll try something else," she continued. She said she
once helped take care of a fellow inmate who became paralyzed down the
left
side of her body because she received the wrong drugs.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">McKnight
also said that it was not
uncommon for prisoners to wait in the pharmacy line for long periods
and then
watch staffers withhold their prescribed medications. They'd get to the
front
of the line, and then watch staffers pull up their mugshots and arrest
histories on Google, and send the prisoners to the back of the line if
the
staffers disliked what they saw, she said.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">At
CCWF, prisoners with chronic
illnesses and disabilities are consigned to the skilled nursing
facility, which
further isolates them within the prison system, and further alienates
them from
their families. "They are sometimes thrown back there and don't know
why
they're back there," said McKnight of inmates being put in skilled
nursing. "They have little or no communication with their families."
Prison officials also regularly lock down the skilled nursing facility
without
explanation, she said.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
court-appointed medical experts
who examined CCWF substantiated McKnight's experiences. The panelist
said they
"found problems with timeliness and quality of care." They also
stated in their report that "[i]nternal audits show lapses in
continuity
of chronic disease medication. We also found concerns related to
expiration of
chronic medication orders."</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">McKnight,
who now works with the
prisoner's rights group California Coalition for Women Prisoners, said
that the
health care staffers at CCWF don't treat patients as humans. "I would
like
to see people have the opportunity to have a better quality of life,"
she
said. "And not have them have a slow death sentence as a result of not
being taken care of."</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
California Coalition for Women
Prisoners is working on a campaign that calls for health care staff to
be held
accountable; health care to be improved to the standards of care
outside of
prison; and prisoner release in lieu of overcrowding.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><font face="Calibri"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">"It's
corrections, but it's not
meant to be cruel and unusual punishment," McKnight said. "And
sometimes that's what it turns into."</span></font></p>
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