Health and Wellness

A walk on the yard sends youth to camp

August 12, 2019 by Marcus Henderson

Visitors and inmates making the circle of peace at the Lower Yard

“We march in solidarity, we all are behind bars,” were the lyrics of a rap song that blared through a massive speaker on San Quentin’s Lower Yard. The song captured the voices and themes of SQ Project Avary’s 3rd Annual “March for the Next Generation.”

The June 22 event had inmate Philippe “Kells” Kelly and Eric McCanty of Project Avary rapping those powerful words in front of a host of prisoners and guests.

“Incarceration carries so much grief with it that it lasts throughout generations,” said Zach Whelan, Project Avary’s executive director. “That’s why it’s important to connect with the men here to help break that intergenerational cycle.”

Project Avary is a Bay Area organization dedicated to helping kids of incarcerated parents. This was the third year the organization partnered with San Quentin’s Kid CAT program, an incarcerated youth support group, to hold the event.

This year the march raised more than $1,500 from the men inside. A matching fund campaign for the walk received $24,000 from out-side donors. The donations will send 24 kids of incarcerated parents to summer camp.

“Everyone knows what happens to a person once they get arrested—they get put behind bars, but no one really knows what happens with the kids,” said Ziri R, 18, of Project Avary. “I was put in a foster home until I was adopted by my father’s sister.

“To this day his absence hurts me. I used to think I didn’t need him—that I’m better off without him. I realize that’s just me trying to pretend I don’t care. The truth is I always cared.”

Consuelo R. giving the crowd words of wisdom

Ziri talked about her experiences in elementary school and how her classmates would talk about their dads. She would watch them run and hug their dads picking them up from school.

“I overcame that pain and turned it into motivation,”

Cesar said he has an album coming out titled “Ridin’ Solo.”

Antwan Banks and Eric “Maserati E” Abercrombie, SQ residents, rocked the event with a medley of their original hip hop and rap songs. Their masterful lyrics and musical production gave the yard a true concert vibe.

“There was a force of energy that ignites you after experiencing this event,” said Mary Richards, an administrator for San Francisco Unified School District. “Being responsible for over a thousand students, you are always looking for the next best things to do.

“We have to give our teachers the opportunities and the tools to empower the kids who have an incarcerated parent,” Richards added.

The day ended with all the participants forming a large “healing circle” and in unison reciting, “With every step we walked, it’s a healing for our families. We are thankful for the future things coming.”

said Ziri, who is headed to Sacramento State University. “I hope you are proud of me, Dad; I know Mom is.”

More than 200 participants walked a lap of silence around the rocky dirt track to start the march. The festivities included prayers, speeches, poems and music that bought smiles and tears. Jonathan Rivas, KidCAT participant, shared his story about being a father in prison and his fear of the intergenerational effects for his daughter.

“I had to watch my daughter grow up through a county jail window,” said Rivas. “I feel that I have failed as a father; by coming to prison I lost that privilege. My older brothers, father and uncles have been to jail. I won’t say it’s hereditary, but I do see the cycle.

“I wanted to be different from my dad. He used to beat me. He would be angry and frustrated all the time. He never showed me love or com- passion.

“I just want to be different and teach my daughter how to be at peace. She deserves a great father,” Rivas added.

Consuelo R, spoke about raising children while the father is in prison, giving back and Project Avary.

“I think people need to see this [event],” said Consuelo. “As people of color, some- times we feel entitled not to give anything back. Coming here made me look at prison- ers in a different way. I will give back more.”

Consuelo thanked Project Avary for the program where her children can meet with other kids going through similar issues. Her son has a mentor to share things with, if not with her. Now her daughter has joined the program.

“I didn’t think having her father in jail would affect her as much as my son, but it has,” said Consuelo. “I’ve seen a change since she started the program: she has opened up more to me and she is more joyful.”

Consuelo left the men with these words.

“Everything you do doesn’t only affect you, it affects everyone connected to you. So please, go back and call your son, daughter or family member and tell them how much you love them, because trust me, they are waiting patiently for your 15-minute call.”

Throughout the speeches, various prisoners and guests participated. Fateen Jackson, who expects to parole soon, performed a spoken word piece titled “Revealed.”

“Losing all sense of self and scared to ask for help as if it was death itself.

I came to prison because I didn’t listen to my intuition.

That would’ve put me in a different position.

And a better condition that I currently live in,” Jackson’s poem concluded.

Cesar, an Avary participant, who goes by the rap name Solo, engaged the audience with his song “It’s a Cold Game.” Cesar’s catchy hook had the crowd repeat- ing it.

“There no friends in this cold game (uun),” he rapped.

Cesar said he has an album coming out titled “Ridin’ Solo.”

“We have to give our teachers the opportunities and the tools to empower the kids who have an incarcerated parent,” Richards added.

Significant improvements in prisoner health care expected from streamlining and automating CDCR medical data system

June 25, 2019 by Harry C. Goodall Jr.

California Correctional Healthcare Services staff

The prestigious HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence was given to the California Correctional Healthcare Services for developing an automated risk classification system in an effort to improve care and reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, according to a Healthcare IT News article.

In past years, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation relied on paper as a basis for maintaining and storing inmate patient records—a system that was “unwieldy” and prone to losing papers. As the inmate population topped 125,000, inmates’ paper healthcare records were spread out across the state of California in more than 30 institutions. With new arrivals averaging 600 per week and 11,000 inmate transferring each month, their health records were slow to follow them.

The challenges of this person-dependent paper pro- cess potentially contributed to adverse medical outcomes and eventually resulted in the appointment of a federal receiver to oversee healthcare within the California Correctional system. This inspired and accelerated a shift to paperless documentation.

The creation of an automated risk classification system improved the placement of nearly 20 percent of all patients with a high-risk designation, allowing the department to transfer inmates to prisons located closer to tertiary care centers—which had access to expanded healthcare services.

“Quality patient care is the principle function of any healthcare organization, regardless of the patient population,” said Federal Receiver J. Clark Kelso. “Incorporating information technology solutions to leverage healthcare data is imperative to make informed decisions and improve organizational performance.”

These changes now al- low healthcare staff and the department to quickly communicate inmate patient healthcare factors in order to appropriately place and house at risk inmate patients.

The department as a whole was able to offer appropriate patient care while reducing avoidable hospitalization for “high-risk” patients from 70.9 percent per 1,000 patients in 2015 to 43.5 percent in 2017. This reduction of paper records has saved the department more than $2 million dollars in the first three years of operation.

Prison nurseries: incarcerating newborns with their mothers

May 15, 2019 by Joe Garcia

Pregnant women face heart-wrenching consequences when they are incarcerated: not only must they give birth under harsh conditions, but then, most likely, they will be forced to surrender their newborn into the hands of others.

Prison nurseries offer some of these women a chance to keep their babies with them, but is that always in the child’s best interest?

“Incarcerating babies may strike many as unconscionable,” child welfare advocate Naomi Schaefer Riley said recently in a National Affairs article. “We must grapple with the ethical implications of the alternatives.

“Such programs raise a number of complex questions. While they tend to produce better outcomes for the incarcerated mothers, it is less clear that they are beneficial for their infant children.”

With over 200,000 women currently incarcerated in this country, not many U.S. prisons have nursery programs available for the estimated 10,000 women who are pregnant and housed in our jails and prisons.

The A&E reality series, “Born Behind Bars” takes viewers inside Indiana’s Wee Ones childcare program—a special housing unit where fe- male prisoners live with their babies after giving birth. Only women with 18 months or less left on their sentences are allowed to participate—that way, the child can go home with them upon their release.

“You’re incarcerated with me and didn’t do anything,” Riley quotes one young moth- er on the show talking to the infant in her arms.

“It makes you feel guilty,” that same young women said. “Pregnancy and prison are the two worst things in life together”—not both bad, but a terrible combination.

The nation’s oldest prison nursery, Bedford Hills in New York, allows pregnant women with lengthy sentences—even life—to give birth, breastfeed and then live with their infant for several months before the child is surrendered to an alternative caregiver. Bedford Hills continues to operate since 1901.

The question remains as to whether the formation of the maternal bond behind prison bars is worth the baby being exposed to such a stressful environment alongside their incarcerated mother. “Because the program is inside a correctional facility, the mothers are involuntarily together and are subjected to an atmosphere of observation, suspicion and discipline,” the Institute on Women and Criminal Justice wrote about New York’s prison nurseries at Bedford Hills and adjacent Taconic Correctional Facility.

Riley, however, noticed in Indiana that “the tightly man- aged environment inside the prison nursery wing is almost certainly preferable to the kind of chaotic and neglectful environment that many of these babies would experience if they went home.”

Nebraska holds the women in its prison nursery unit to a “zero-tolerance” standard, where even the slightest disciplinary infraction can cause a mother to be removed from the program and separated from her child.

“These decisions are often made in less than 24 hours,” said Riley. “Prison guards, who already have extraordinary power over their wards, now also have the power to lower rates of recidivism later on.”

A small study in Nebraska showed that 33% of female in- mates who gave birth behind bars and had their infant taken away later reoffended. Once Nebraska started its prison nursery program, only 9% of the pregnant inmates who were allowed to keep their newborns with them ever re- turned to the system.

“Even if some kind of secure attachment may occur in a prison-nursery environment take away their children at the drop of a hat.

“When you take account of the fact that these women have just given birth and are also dealing with substance- abuse withdrawal, mental illness, and a criminal past, it’s surprising more of these women aren’t kicked out of the program.”

According to Riley’s report, “Women who keep their babies with them during these early years have significantly it is important to remember that no sooner do these babies and mothers bond than something might separate them completely, and for a long period of time,” said Riley.

“This kind of bonding followed by extreme and sudden separation seems to be one of the worst imaginable outcomes for a child.”

But without the rare option of being housed in a prison nursery, pregnant mothers must rely on someone else in their family—or child services—to help raise their young.

“What happens to these children when their primary caretaker is incarcerated?” Riley asks.

She offers Sentencing Project numbers: “about a third (37%) of the children of incarcerated women are living with their fathers. Most of these children are living with grandparents or other relatives, while one of every nine (10.9%) women in prison has a child living in foster care.”

What appears to be the most important factor for any infant child is a reliably consistent attachment to at least one caring adult. Studies indicate that their very first year—and ideally the first three years—are crucial for healthy and normal mental, emotional and physical development.

Alabama prison failed to identify suicidal inmates

May 15, 2019 by Carlos Drouaillet

An investigation has been launched into suicides by Alabama prisoners, NPR reported.

“The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has the highest suicide rate in the nation, with most such deaths occurring in solitary confinement and solitary-like units,” according to a case summary in the legal fight.

The lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program.

There have been over 200 suicide attempts requiring hospitalization between the filling of the case and January 2019, NPR reported March 28. Thirty-one were completed suicides.

An investigation was launched by U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thomp- son on whether the state responded adequately to the suicide issue.

“prisoners with serial mental illnesses were routinely housed in solitary confinement and provided with a little to no mental health care”

This is the second investigation in five years for Alabama’s prisons over the constant suicide deaths in its overcrowded and understaffed prison system, the story noted.

The state’s responsibility for the many suicides has been the subject of a legal battle

since June 2014. The lawsuit challenges the conditions and treatment of the mentally ill inmates.

Thompson is hearing testimony in reference to the 15 suicides in 15 months.

The case summary says “prisoners with serial mental illnesses were routinely housed in solitary confinement and provided with little to no mental health care.”

Judge Thompson ruled in June 2017 that Alabama’s prison system violated inmates’ constitutional protections by practicing cruel and unusual punishment.

In his 302-page ruling, Thompson noted that repeated staff absences and lasting inmate overcrowding flooded the system.

Between other complete deficiencies, the judge found that Alabama’s prisons also failed in the following areas:

• Failed to identify prisoners with serious mental health needs and properly classify their needs.

• Failed to set up individualized treatment plans.

• Failed to provide qualified and properly supervised mental health staff.

• Failed to identify and treat inmates at risk of suicide.

• Continuously placed gravely mentally ill inmates in solitude without considering the repercussions of those circumstances.

Thompson concluded, “Simply put, ADOC’s mental health care is horrendously inadequate.”

Prison Commissioner Jefferson Dunn said overcrowding and understaffing retard reform. He added that Alabama will borrow $800 million to build four new prison facilities.

Solitary: Book depicts one man's journey through hell

May 15, 2019 by San Quentin News Contributer

Albert Woodfox spent almost 45-years in solitary confinement in Louisiana for a murder he insists he didn’t commit and has written a book detailing the horror of the isolation.

He and one other prisoner were accused of murdering an Angola prison guard. Federal courts threw out two murder convictions, but he decided to plead no contest before a third trial.

“By pleading nolo contendere I wouldn’t be innocent in the eyes of the law,” Woodfox told the Times-Picayune. “But I knew I was innocent.”

The result: he spent 44 years and 10 months in solitary, getting out one hour per day.

“Their desire was to break us—which they failed miserably at—or have us die in a 6×9-foot cell,” Woodfox said. He added that he kept his sanity. He was released in 2016.

He discussed his book, Solitary, at the New Orleans Public Library in March.

Woodfox was serving time for armed robbery at the Louisiana State Penitentiary when he was accused of killing a guard, which resulted in him being placed in a solitary cell. Woodfox was one of three inmates who had been identified as members of the Black Panther Party.

There is no reason to believe that Woodfox or Her- man Wallace killed Angola guard Brent Miller in April 1972, The Times-Picayune reported. The guard’s widow does not even believe it. Nor is there reason to believe that, months later, Robert King killed a fellow inmate, ac- cording to columnist Jarvis DeBerry of The Times-Picayune.

There is reason to believe the Angola 3 were punished for calling out the racism and the brutality bestowed upon them by prison officials and for encouraging inmates to demand better treatment, the newspaper said.

Woodfox quotes a 2008 deposition where Warden Burl Cain said that even if Woodfox had not killed Miller, “I would still keep him in CCR. I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates.”

In 2001, King was released from prison. Wallace’s conviction was tossed out in 2013; he was released from prison the day before he died of liver cancer.

Virginia believes women’s sanitary products pose a threat to prisons

May 15, 2019 by Harry C. Goodall Jr.

Female visitors entering Virginia State Prison have been forced to remove certain feminine products to visit their family member or friend, according to the Capitol News Service.

But under the new House Bill 1884, which is awaiting approval in the House of Delegates, the Virginia Department of Corrections would have to modify the policy for visitors using menstrual products. The current policy is in place to avoid the smuggling of contraband into Department of Corrections facilities.

“If someone chooses to visit a Virginia Department of Corrections inmate, he or she cannot have anything hidden inside a body cavity,” said a Department of Corrections spokesman to the Richmond Times- Dispatch, adding, “There have been many instances in which visitors have attempted to smuggle drugs into our prisons by concealing those drugs in a body cavity, including the vagina.”

House Bill 1884, sponsored by Del. Mark Keam, (D-Fairfax) is a new bill that was approved by the House Militia Police and Public Safety Committee with a vote of 19-1 in support of the new policy. The bill is in Virginia’s full House of Delegates awaiting approval to modify the existing policy on feminine hygiene products, accord- ing to the article.

HB1884 would change the current policy to require the prison to do the following: notify visitors about the policy prohibiting menstrual cups and tampons ahead of their visit.

Second, provide visitors the option of removing any prohibited menstrual product and replacing it with a state-issued one in order to have a contact visit with an inmate. And third, allow visitors who do not want to remove prohibited menstrual products the option of a no-contact visit with an inmate, according to the article.

The bill prompted Brian Moran, Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security, to suspend the current practice until further review of the policy, according to the Capital News Service article.

Bringing dance to the Big House: Gangnam Style

April 30, 2019 by Aron Kumar Roy

The No Limits Dance Crew pumped up the crowd with their Gangnam Style performance in San Quentin’s H-unit Chapel.

Left to Right: Steven Minor, prisoner dancer, Jonathan Terry, Britton Schutte and Salvador Hernandez

The seven-person dance crew garnered cheers from the crowd as they danced to the song “Gangnam Style.”

“We’re so good its criminal!” one dancer yelled right before the first of four showings began.

The No Limits Dance Crew with San Quentin staff performing a dance in front of an audience

Ms. Bridges, a clinician with the Enhanced Outpatient Program (EOP), created the dance crew as a therapeutic tool to treat the participants’ mental health issues.

She brings to the program 20 years of dance and choreography experience, as well as a degree in dance.

“I think it’s really helpful for me to focus my mind on something creative and peaceful,” Bridges said.

The men in blue learned many coping skills from being involved with the No Limits Dance Crew.

“It was a mindfulness exercise,” said Britton Schutte, “concentrating and being in the moment, almost like a meditation.”

“I’ve been wanting to exercise for a long time; exercise is good for fighting depression,” said dancer Matthew Paradise.

Dancing also helped the inmates gain confidence while staying clean and sober.

They mastered the choreography with just one month of practice.

“I used a lot of my coping skills,” Salvador Hernandez said.

The crew members brought varying levels of dance experience to the team, but they all brought open minds and great attitudes.

Geovanne Jimenez started dancing just four weeks ago. He appreciates the camaraderie that the crew members have built.

“Before, we used to just see each other and didn’t really talk. Now we get along and know each other,” Jimenez said.

Jonathan Terry brings previous dance experience to the crew.

He was involved in a dance program while incarcerated at Salinas Valley State Prison.

“You gotta stay smooth,” was Terry’s tip.

“If your day’s going bad, you could go dancing, and it brightens up your day,” said crew member Steven Minor. “I think they should have dancing on the whole yard!”

Nevada man commits suicide after his pleas for execution are denied

April 30, 2019 by admins

A Nevada man who pleaded for his execution killed himself when his wish was denied.

Scott Raymond Dozier, 48, was found hanged in his cell on Jan. 5 at Nevada’s maximum security prison in Ely, prison officials told the New York Times.

“I’ve been very clear about my desire to be executed… even if suffering is inevitable,” Dozier said in a handwritten note to a state court judge. The judge postponed Dozier’s execution in 2017 over concerns that the “untried” combination of drugs could “leave him suffocating, conscious and able to move,” according to The Associated Press.

Dozier was convicted in 2002 for killing a man in Las Vegas. At first, he appealed his death sentence. But after two years, he changed his approach and instead pushed for his execution date.

Dozier had insisted the state set a date, even if it meant a painful death from a cocktail of lethal-injection drugs. The cocktail contained a mix of drugs including fentanyl, which led manufactures to intervene, saying that they would suffer “grave reputational harm if its products were used in the execution against its wishes,” according to the Times.

The complexity of Dozier’s case has placed Nevada at the top of the national death penalty debate, shedding light on the practices of some states attempting to use drugs that pharmaceutical companies do not want used for executions, the AP reported.

Dozier had abandoned his appeals for the death sentence he received in 2007 for the separate murders of two drug associates in 2002 in Phoenix and Las Vegas, the AP reported.

“Just get it done, just do it effectively and stop fighting about it,” Dozier told the AP in a telephone interview last August.

Filmmaker Edgar Barens, who was working on producing a documentary on families affected by the death penalty, told the Times that “the prospect of eking out his existence on Death Row for the rest of his life was unfathomable to him.”

Dozier’s mental health had deteriorated after several delays and after being frequently kept in isolation or on suicide watch, attorney Tom Ericsson told the Times. “He was just so beat down by the prison system and ready to call it a day,” Ericsson said.

Attorneys argued that Dozier’s deterioration was attributed to unconstitutional treatment of their client, the AP reported.

Founder of San Quentin’s Buddhadharma Sangha remembered

April 30, 2019 by aronroy@gmail.com

Responding to a call from inmates interested in starting a Zen group, Seido Eishu Lee founded the Buddhadharma Sangha inside San Quentin State Prison in 1999. He went on to serve as the Sangha’s Head Teacher until his retirement in 2015.

Seido Eishu Lee Lüssen de Barros passed away peacefully on March 6 surrounded by family, friends and Sangha. He is survived by his wife, son, three stepchildren and six grandsons.

Since the day Lee founded it, the San Quentin Sang- ha has met nearly every week, bringing the lineage of Dogen Zenji and Suzuki Roshi behind the prison walls and touching the lives of hundreds of inmates and volunteers.

Lee conferred the Bodhisattva precepts on many Zen students, including more than 30 inmates and several non-inmates lay-ordained inside San Quentin over the course of four Jukai ceremonies between 2002 and 2015.

Lee Lüssen de Barros was ordained a Soto Zen priest in 1989 at Green Gulch Farm by Sojun Mel Weitsman, receiving the Dharma name Seido Eishu, “Clear Path, Constant/Endless Effort.” He received Dharma Transmission at Tassajara in 1998` from Norman Fischer.

Along with his wife, lay Zen teacher Martha de Barros, he lived for more than 10 years at Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara. He filled senior staff roles at Green Gulch and served as Tanto at Tassajara.

Seido Lee de Barros (center) with Zen students and volunteers at a San Quentin Jukai

Lee was deeply involved in and much beloved by the Marin County Interfaith community. He was active in the Marin Interfaith Street Chaplaincy, serving as street people see who inmates are turning into and that they’re not the same people they were years ago.

As Norman Fischer de- scribed him, “Lee was a true priest and a good one. He liked to keep things light and modest but underneath that was a fierce and deep spirituality.”

A memorial for Seido Lee de Barros will be held at Green Gulch Farm at 4 p.m. on April 27.

Hygiene products more readily available for incarcerated woman

April 30, 2019 by admins

Department of health seal — Department of Health seal

Female hygiene products are becoming more avail- able to incarcerated women, thanks to what is called “the menstrual equality movement,” according to corrections.com.

The new policy for federal prisons was adopted in 2017. It requires all federal prisons to provide free Tampons and other hygiene products to female prisoners. A bill in Congress to apply the change to all states failed, the story reported.

“It’s all part of what is called the menstrual equity movement,” said Chris Tricozzi, vice president of sales for Impact Products. “It has been growing significantly in just this past couple of years.”

The number of women in federal prison since the late 1970s grew similarly to the rate of male prisoners but has skyrocketed 834 percent na- tionwide in state and local correction facilities, according to the Prison Policy Initiative,

The new policy was implemented because so many of these women lack the funds to purchase feminine hygiene products, reported corrections.com.

In April 2016, Newsweek magazine ran a cover article as the official “coming-out party for Tampons.” The article discussed why women’s advocates, politicians and others want to put an “end to the period of shaming,” as Newsweek called it, when it comes to feminine hygiene products.