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SAFPF torture will continue in Texas

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wdtony:
Name and unit withheld

Date July 7, 2008

"Their cure was to drink a pitcher of water for 10 days ..."

Hello, how are you? I truly hope this letter finds you in the best of health and spirits. Well, I feel I should fill you in on the things that I have been put through during my stay here at Saf-P. Well, where should I start? There is so much mental abuse day by day by officers, counselors, and medical. My first experience of abuse was from medical a few days after I got here. They told me when I was sick to my stomach that there was nothing they could do for me and it's my problem and that maybe I should think about that before I decide to get incarcerated next time. I have had several incidents since with medical, and I have paid (3.00) to be seen just for them to tell me to drink water each time. One time about a week ago I was having and still am having sharp stomach pains, and one night I couldn't sleep, so I finally hurt so bad I went to the door crying bent over in pain. I had to wait for the next day to see medical, and they wouldn't even give me Tylenol for the pain. Their cure was to drink a pitcher of water for 10 days, and still I have the pains. Okay, wow, you are going to have a lot to read because there is a lot of unnecessary things that go on here. Okay, and then when I was working in the kitchen, I was laughing at a peer about her falling. Well, we were both laughing, and I guess the officer perceived us to be laughing at him. Anyways, he verbally threatened me by saying, "Oh, you think something is funny? Well, we'll see who has the last laugh." He said, "Your time is gonna come and I'll get you and when I do, I'll get you good." I even had witnesses to this incident, wrote a grievance, and they sent it back saying there's nothing they can do. We constantly have doors slammed in our faces, are talked to like trash, and get belittled. The guards here are horrible. Oh, Lord, the counselors, my counselor, is always talking down on my family, constantly calling my husband a loser, my mom a drunk, and making me feel less than. At one point she made me feel so low that I wanted to give up. She tells me that she will recommend I stay longer if I plan to go home to my husband. This is someone I'm married to and have a child with. I don't know what gives her the right to think she can choose who I be with. It is so spirit-breaking to where I literally cry every day. I am depressed, have nightmares about hanging myself. Before, I have had nightmares about being beaten by the guards. It is terrible. I have been to prison once prior to this, and my time there wasn't half this bad. I haven't felt this ridiculed and depressed in the 25 years I have been alive. I am in a real deep depression. Okay. On to the work. I am no longer working in the kitchen, but when I was, I had to start my day at 2:30am and go work, got off at 6:00am, came back to the dorm, took a shower, went and got clothes and got ready for school at 8:00am, came back, ate, then started groups from 12:00pm. 4:20pm, went ate, had some time, took another shower, then had our last group from 6:30-7:30. After head count, if I wanted any time to write my family, I had to cut into my sleep time, which means I went to bed about 9:30pm, sleep for about an hour, then get woke up and have to sit up for count at 10:30, which takes usually 45 minutes to an hour. So, every day I was forced to run on four, maybe five, hours sleep. In a week's time, I slept about 25 hours maximum when I should've had about 40 to 50 hours. And the punishment here is crazy. I am being punished for arguing with someone, just a verbal altercation, threats, no fights. Now I am living with 68 other women and expected not to argue. Anyways, my punishment is three days in the box, a 1,500-word essay on "Do I like negative attention?" and I have to say in front of everyone and be humiliated: "I'm real tough. I'm real tough, watch me roar, watch me roar. If you don't do what I say, I'll scream until I get my way then turn away." Also with this I have to clean sinks and toilets for three hours and lose all privileges for two weeks, which includes I cannot have hot water, have to be awake, not allowed to lay down from 4:00am-8:00pm. No TV, and the other person received one day in the box, one week LOP [loss of privileges], and one hour extra duty. I received twice the punishment for the same thing. Then, I had fallen asleep, and they took my food and told me I can't do nothing but stay on my bed, no TV, no day room, no sleep, no food until the 18th of July. There is so much more to this place than meets the eye. And I know that one right we have is freedom of speech and we even get consequences behind talking. I have been here for six months now and have been through straight up hell and torture. I am to the breaking point. I am literally starting to go crazy in here, no lie, and I still don't have a date to go home yet. I am cutting into my sleep time by writing this. I have so much more to tell you about how this place is but really need to get some sleep, 4:00am comes really early. I thank you for taking the time out to listen to my, well, some of my, story. I will write more details when I receive a response. Thank you, and God bless you.

Source: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase ... d%3A714279

wdtony:
Name withheld

Unit: Hackberry

Date of narrative (sent to The Austin Chronicle): July 10, 2008

I recently came across your article on the SAFPF conditions described by Jodi Stodder-Caldwell. Everything she said is true. I felt like someone was finally putting into words what I had gone through during my experience there.

In 2000, I was confined to the Hackberry Unit in Gatesville, a unit that is geared towards "clients" who have special medical conditions, anything from bipolar and depression to anemia and multiple sclerosis. I often wondered how carrying chairs around from dorm to dorm to gym and then sitting in those same chairs for up to 16 hours a day was supposed to "cure" me from my alcoholism. In all honesty, I didn't have a problem with drugs or alcohol. That's not denial; it was the deal my lawyer worked out so that I wouldn't have to spend time in a state jail. Completing the program at SAFPF would enable me to successfully meet the terms of my deferred adjudication for theft. I thought it would be a piece of cake, but it was nothing like the time I spent in residential treatments for typical teenage angst.

Occasionally you would get the guard who didn't think you were a piece of trash; one in particular often called us "honey" and "sweetheart" and made it clear that the decisions we made to get us in there were not indicative of the people we were. More often than not, however, you would get the guard who called you by your number and told you that you deserved every second of your jail time. Mothers were often subjected to the worst degradation about the neglect of their kids. "Highly personal and intentionally wounding" doesn't begin to describe the insults they would fling at us. As a teenager who found herself on the wrong side of law enforcement, I was more than willing to accept responsibility for my actions. I was not prepared to exit the program with an eating disorder and a distorted reality of how the world works. Something as simple as letting another inmate borrow a piece of paper would be grounds for "trafficking and trading." "Would you let your neighbor borrow crack?!" the counselors and officers would bellow at us. No, but I would sure let my neighbor borrow a cup of sugar.

Try as I might, I will never forget the absolute disregard for human life. A girl in the dorm across the pipe chase from mine ... had taken ill. She came into the program as a healthy young woman. Very bright and happy, even through these circumstances, and she worked in the beauty parlor. We had all seen her worsening, walking to the chow hall with a red face, nose sniffling, coughing. She went to the infirmary a few times, but she just couldn't shake whatever she had. Though I knew her, she was in the opposite dorm, so I didn't always see her. One Sunday morning, most of the girls were filing in from church services when we heard a loud commotion coming from the other side. It was very chaotic, but you could hear the girls screaming at the guard on duty to call the ambulance. Over and over they would scream, and over and over the guard would scream at the girls to get back to their cubicles. It must have been torturous to watch someone, a girl you had gotten to know, a girl you could call your friend, die in front of your eyes while the people you are supposed to trust sit by and do nothing. Every dorm was dismissed to the gym while her body was carried out. As far as we know, there was not much medically wrong with her when she got to SAFPF. Like most of us, her conditions were more psychological. And yet, she died. After I left, I remember getting a call from a lawyer who wanted to pursue more about the case, but I couldn't offer much more than what I have written now.

I apologize for such a long letter. I am happy to inform you that the one guard was right about not letting the decisions I made define who I was. I believe I am a success story, though I don't attribute it to the excellent, top-rate treatment and care I received. I attribute it to a wonderful support system and the fear of returning to hell on Earth. I could not understand how so many women could return to that place on relapse track. Again and again, a woman would come in and tell us this was her second time in this place. One girl was even on her fourth period of confinement there. Obviously, the program was not working.

Thank you so much for writing about such an important issue. Like Jodi, I was also somewhat afraid to speak up. Unlike Jodi, I never did. I kept my mouth shut and did my time. I know that for me, I had to go through something like that to get my life back together. While grateful to have had a turnaround in my life, I would never again wish to go through an experience like that. Thank you, thank you, thank you for speaking out about the atrocities of the Gateway Foundation in the Texas Criminal Justice System. Please tell Jodi thank you, too. Perhaps if more women spoke up, there could be positive procedure changes so that there could be positive life changes. Confinement for criminal actions shouldn't be a walk in the park, but it shouldn't lead to death, either.

Thank you so much for your time.

Source: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase ... d%3A714279

Antigen:
News: December 12, 2008

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase ... oid=714278

Whitmire: Substance Abuse Program Is Doing Fine
By Patricia J. Ruland

"Sadism is not a must in therapy." – Kerry Wolf, Hackberry Unit, 2001-2002

In September, Austin attorney Derek How­ard received another batch of narratives written by female inmates alleging they were severely and shamelessly mistreated while incarcerated at one of several of the state's Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facilities (aka "SAFPF"), which are charged with the statutory responsibility of rehabilitating drug and alcohol offenders. Writing from the Hackberry Unit in Gatesville, one inmate had posed a question: What would state senators do about SAFPF if they found out what it was really like?

During Nov. 13 interim charge hearings conducted by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, chaired by Houston Sen. John Whitmire, the inmate's question was answered – but not as she might have hoped. Despite a growing pile of inmate reports accumulating over the last year – personal narratives that graphically recount "mind-crushing" torment, even torture, suffered by SAFPF inmates – the committee blithely looked the other way, praising SAFPF personnel and exchanging drunk jokes with them during the hearing. Whitmire declared of SAFPF, "We'd be in a hell of a mess without it."

That many inmates describe SAFPF as a state-funded hell on earth was of little consequence to the committee. As reported in the Chronicle ("Rehabilitation or Torture?" May 23), inmates claim that staff members force them to sit in chairs for long hours and days, for weeks and months on end, in a global punishment known as "tighthouse"; compel SAFPF "sisters" to verbally berate each other during "family" time; routinely call inmates "whores," "bitches," and bad mothers; and mockingly dispense "miracle water" rather than medicine for serious conditions. Numer­ous inmates contend that SAFPF is worse than prison and a far cry from healthy rehabilitation.

Earlier this year, following the initial reports of inmate charges, Whitmire's committee announced that this interim hearing would focus on SAFPF procedures. But by August, specific mention of SAFPF had dropped off the hearing agenda. Asked why, a committee aide said: "There's not enough evidence. ... We're not going to hold hearings based on your article" – or based on the growing pile of inmate testimonials, apparently.

At last month's Senate hearings to review, among other things, the state's privately run prisons and related programs, Whitmire was caught off guard by the testimony of Kerry Wolf, former inmate of the Hackberry "special needs" SAFPF unit in Gatesville. "Obviously, you've come to support SAFPF," the senator began. "Did it work?" Wolf answered, "I was appalled by the human rights abuses and torture that went on in the name of treatment." She'd sat through tighthouse herself. "I saw inmates who were already mentally fragile losing their minds, running around, tearing out their hair, falling out of chairs onto the floor, having seizures, fainting, or hallucinating," Wolf said. As for "peer-driven" therapy, she told the committee, it was "Lord of the Flies run amok."

But Wolf was the lone SAFPF critic that day. A dismissive Whitmire implied that she'd been out of SAFPF too long for her testimony to matter, sighing in relief, "Ohhhhh ... there's been a lot of changes since then" (Wolf was in SAFPF from 2001 to 2002). Whitmire quickly lost interest, and during most of her testimony, he fidgeted and whispered to an aide. Michael Giniger took the mic and promptly discredited Wolf. "I am vice president of Gateway Foundation, the organization that this woman claims tortures people in our SAFPF facilities, which we don't. I ... tell you as I told you before, the SAFPF programs that are offered here in Texas ... are by far the best offered in the country." He pointed to 2003 "outcome studies," conducted by the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council, which showed "astonishingly good outcomes." Unsurpris­ing­ly, Whitmire didn't point out that those studies also covered the years when Wolf was at SAFPF. Wolf left the hearings in tears. "I can't stand to listen to this," she said.

Witness Shirley Otto, a counselor at Hack­berry for three years, denied any abuses and defended tighthouse as "an adult time-out." She herself had actually gone through the program, as have other SAFPF counselors. Speaking of her stay, she said, "I needed some intensive 'behavior modification,'" a phrase other inmates describe as ominous. "We're supportive of SAFP and love to hear from people like you," Whitmire responded, probing no further. "Let's celebrate your sobriety."

Counselor Becky Green (who left SAFPF in 1997) defended SAFPF's methods, saying, "There are reasons we do what we do," and, "There's no other program better than this." Her comments echoed the Gateway official's disclaimer that some of the methods Gate­way uses as "treatment" are "not comfortable." His talk might have been part sales pitch, too – the state again is seeking a contractor to provide 63 million dollars' worth of new SAFPF beds. Outside the hearing room, a woman (who asked that her name be withheld) spoke to the Chronicle on her own behalf and corroborated key inmate claims of abuse, based on her 2005 experience at Hackberry. She recalled being confined to "chairs" from about 4am to 8pm for a week. Inmates were given peanut-butter sandwiches three times a day, save for an occasional burrito. She heard inmates called "bitches" and "whores," and confirmed they were shamed for "sucking glass dick" (i.e., smoking crack). She said she complained about SAFPF "all the time" during her stay but explained, "My complaints weren't valid." Asked whether abuses aided her recovery, she said, "somewhat."

Following the hearing, Whitmire was asked whether being called "bitches" and "whores" should be part of the state's rehabilitative regimen. "None of us thinks it should," he told the Chronicle. "If they're doing that, they should stop." John Moriarty, state inspector general over the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, refused to answer that question. Moriarty did say that his office has completed a review of SAFPFs and that no civil rights laws or state policies have been violated.

Although Whitmire believes SAFPFs have changed for the better, inmates remain skeptical that cosmetic changes – such as renaming the still-enforced tighthouse "reflection house" – will have a beneficial effect. "When or if public officials come [for inspection], they will change [SAFPF] to look presentable, but as soon as they leave, we'll be treated like garbage," one inmate from the Halbert Unit wrote on Sept. 3.

Inmates still report being called "dope fiends" and being assigned childish tasks such as coloring and singing nursery rhymes. One inmate described watching pus drip from her untreated staph infection as she was forced to clean showers. Another said she witnessed the jovial Otto yelling at an inmate who had smiled at her, "Don't smile!"; this inmate also recounted urinating in her underwear after being denied a bathroom trip. Another inmate said that during tighthouse, a clinical supervisor taunted, "Y'all don't want to go out there and continue to be crack whores, do you?"

The stream of letters to attorney Howard abruptly stopped in September. Was it the systemwide lockdown resulting from a recent death row threat on Whitmire's life? Was it because inmates learned there would be no lawsuit, due to the expense? Another letter may provide another possible answer: Inmates were being threatened with solitary confinement if they tried to get the word out about alleged SAFPF abuses.

According to another narrative, in October inmates were supposed to "model" sitting "appropriately" in chairs for "observers" during a "media event." (The Chronicle was not invited.) If they were among the official observers, legislators might ask themselves: Just how can SAFPF be improved, if lawmakers remain indifferent to inmates' pleas for help?

Copyright © 2008 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.

wdtony:
Dukakis: Texas model in prison rehab

By Mike Ward | Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 08:00 AM

Michael Dukakis knows the deadly spiral of addiction well.

His wife, Kitty, beat a highly publicized, years-long addiction to diet pills and anti-depressants.

As governor of Massachusetts in the 1980s, Dukakis championed cutting-edge treatment programs for imprisoned drunk drivers in his state, which were among the first in the nation. He launched programs to curb teenage drinking and drug abuse.

As the Democratic nominee for president in 1988, he challenged Americans to kick their habit of drink and drugs.

On Tuesday, Dukakis, 75, brought his rehab message to Austin, in meetings with state leaders to urge them to grow Texas’ treatment programs — even expand some to cover Medicaid recipients.

And he brought congratulations: Texas is a national model, by greatly expanding its prison treatment and rehabilitation programs two years ago in a move that was criticized.

So far, recent reports show, that expansion may be paying off — with recidivism rates that appear to be dropping, and with prison growth flat-lining so that no expensive new lockups will need to be built for the foreseeable future.

“Lives are being saved,” Dukakis told the Statesman, in an exclusive interview in his suite at the Driskill Hotel. “There’s nothing partisan about this issue. This issue was not mentioned in any of the State of the State messages this year, but it’s one of the most important issues we face.”

Here’s why, Dukakis says:

For every alcoholic or drunken driver or addicted drug user who receives treatment, achieves sobriety and becomes a productive citizen, taxpayers spend less and less to deal with the problems.

For everyone who kicks a drug habit, less cocaine and heroin and other illicit drugs are consumed in the United States — and that cuts the profits of the drug cartels and street gangs.

“Five percent of the world’s population,” said Dukakis, referring to the U.S., “accounts for 50 percent of the world’s cocaine use. With the war that’s going on on the border, that could spill into Texas, we need to stop providing the cartels’ profits and stop the demand for the drugs.”

“There’s a massive silence on this issue. It’s amazing.”

Dukakis is on the board of a Massachusetts-based group called Join Together that advocates for effective drug and alcohol policy, prevention and treatment.

“I’m here in Texas to first say, congratulations to Texas for doing this (expanding the prison programs),” he said. “I hope all the states can expand their programs like Texas has.

“We not only need these programs, we need education programs beginning in the elementary grades to teach children not to use drugs and alcohol.”

“Programs like these — prevention, treatment, rehabilitation — pay enormously with the lives they save and in the improved public safety that results. If we send people to prison and provide them with no programs, they will come out one day and go back into their community and return to the same cycle of abuse they were in before.”

For her part, Kitty Dukakis is just as outspoken and committed to the same goals as her husband.

“I wish what I have been able to achieve for many others,” she said. “Texas is doing the right thing.”

And from Senate Criminal Justice Committee John Whitmire, D-Houston, one of the Texans who the Dukakis’ came to Austin to congratulate, came this response:

“How often do you hear that — someone from Massachusetts congratulating Texas? Texas is trying. We’re trying to make a difference.”



Source:
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/ ... rison.html


Please write a comment to The Statesman.

wdtony:
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