VLOG: A Day in the Life of Rural Reentry (9): Cruel and Unusual Healthcare

You've heard about "cruel and unusual punishment," but what about cruel and unusual healthcare? Executive Director Jodi Hansen contemplates the health of incarcerated folks and the egregious neglect they face inside.

Video text below:

“I am here at the hospital visiting my friend Sis. I met Sis in 2013 when she began coming to our bible studies. You would never know that Sis had struggled with meth addiction and was incarcerated for low-level ID theft. She looks more like a suburban grandmother and oh boy, when we would sing during our services—Sis was on her feet dancing and clapping her hands. But, in 2016 she began complaining of back pain that radiated down her leg. Sounded a lot like a herniated disk or spinal stenosis to my nurse brain, so I asked if she had requested to be seen in the health center. She had but wasn’t getting a response. The months went by and we watched, week after week as we prayed for her condition, but no care was provided. Finally, in 2017 Sis suddenly lost control of her bowel and bladder and her leg went limp and numb. She was rushed to the local hospital and in the middle of the night, they did emergency surgery to correct her… herniated disk and spinal stenosis. A very common condition that shouldn’t require emergency surgery. 

And prison isn’t an easy place to recover from surgery—the floors on concrete, the beds are hard, and officers don’t really care about you being compliant with doctors’ orders as much as giving their own power and control orders. Instead of healing, she deteriorated, had two more emergency surgeries over the next three years, ending up in a wheelchair, in constant pain, and having to self-catheterize to urinate. 

In February of 2020, an MRI showed that more surgery was needed. Instead of providing this care, the DOC ordered physical therapy, but the therapist refused to treat her until she was seen by an outside spinal specialist. Smart therapist! She continued to deteriorate as the Department of Corrections continued to deny her care. 

In November of 2020, our RI team appealed to the Governor to commute her sentence so she could receive the care she needed before her condition became permanent. In February she was released, and on Monday, she got that surgery she has been needing for 14 months. She will then go to a rehab facility for intense physical therapy and, God willing, be able to walk again. But it didn’t have to be this way. If she had gotten an MRI and surgery early on, her outcome would have been much different. And her case is not unusual. As a minister inside the prison, I have witnessed too many cases where care is denied. 

In fact, chronic illness is the number one cause of death for people in our state prisons in this nation—mostly because it’s just bad or denied to save money. Even a year after returning home from prison, formerly incarcerated people still have a mortality rate nearly four times higher than the average person, with chronic health diseases the leading cause of death. And, I have to ask, is it our intention that people who break the law should suffer bodily harm as part of the way we hold them accountable for committing a crime—like a Dickens’s novel where everybody just expects people who go to prison to die of disease? I thought that was considered cruel and unusual punishment. I’m gonna head back up to sit with Sis.”