How prison hospice can and should change your world view
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when i first met
jean he was pushing a broom down the
corridor
sweeping up after lunch and humming the
theme from the bridge over the river
kwai
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um
his head full of gray hair bob from side
to side is he hummed
he was probably in his late 60s maybe
early 70s
but he still had a little pep in his
step
as he got closer to me he said the
little speech that all men in the
institution gave when they first met you
good morning ma’am i’m inmate 3472
and i’m doing a life sentence for murder
the next time i saw gene he wasn’t
pushing a broom
but he was being pushed in a wheelchair
by another inmate
his head that was once full of gray hair
now
didn’t have quite so much on it and he
could barely keep his head
straight as it bobbed front to back
on his now pencil thin neck
as they approached me he said good
morning ma’am
i’m inmate three four
he coughed and he choked a little bit
and the other inmate said he’s inmate
3472
and he’s doing a life sentence for
murder
the last time i saw gene he had no gray
hair left and he couldn’t even hold his
head up
it just hung there
as a small trail of drool drift from his
lips
when he would grunt
gene died a few weeks after that he was
actually
only 62 when he died
how many of you often think about
getting old
if and when you do you probably think
about those around you
who love you who will take care of you
but how many of you have often thought
about getting old
in prison or getting sick in prison
or dying in prison
who takes care of them in 2017
there were nearly 200 000 individuals
considered elderly in prisons
by the year 2030 estimates indicate
that we will see a rise of almost 4
400 percent
what this means is we’re seeing
lots of older oh wait a minute
i forgot to tell you the body tends to
physiologically age 10 to 15 years
faster than the non-incarcerated
population
what this means is we are seeing
people in their 40s and 50s with
diseases of old age like dementia
alzheimer’s disease parkinson’s disease
the bottom line is that we as a society
are seeing an enormous amount of
individuals
who are getting sick and it is the
taxpayer
who is responsible for them
ruby was 58 and suffering
from rheumatoid arthritis
her hands were so gnarled she couldn’t
pick up an eating utensil
she could only eat at dinner times
like a dog pushing her food around her
plate
with her tongue and her paws
with only 30 minutes to eat she rarely
got enough food
and by the age of 59 she was so
malnourished
that she had a massive stroke
but why was ruby in prison anyway i mean
she must have done something
horrible to be in prison for life
well ruby was in prison for something
that if she did it nowadays she might
not even see the inside
of a city jail cell but it was 1937
and ruby had shot her husband after
he had beaten her and their child
so severely that responding law
enforcement
couldn’t tell the gender of the swollen
bloody child
when the guards found ruby the next
morning she was lying in her cell
alone her prison uniform was
soaked in urine and feces
and she had died there by herself
looking up at a picture
of her now adult daughter
in the 1970 supreme court estelle versus
gamble
the high court determined that the
deprivation of health care to inmates
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment
in 2017 the united nations commission
on criminal justice gave us what we now
call the mandela rules
these rules mandate the minimum amounts
of care that we give
to people within our prison system
so if we can’t ignore the problem
and we’re mandated to a certain level
of care what can we do with them
in the united states and abroad whereby
prisons
are putting in hospice programs
to care for the aging and dying behind
bars
inmates are provided with palliative
care not curative care
and they are taught to care for each
other
and most importantly no one dies alone
within prisons we find
that healthy prisoners will cost the u.s
taxpayer about sixty thousand dollars
per inmate per year
but these individuals are not healthy
by any stretch of the imagination
and these sick inmates can cost us
more like 160 000
per inmate per year
for health care alone
what my research found is that these
hospice units inside prisons
can shave off sometimes nearly one-third
of the prison healthcare budget
but there was something else more
interestingly enough
these prison hospice programs change the
culture of the prison
we see a lower inmate on inmate violence
lower statistics on employee turnover
and overall safer prisons
but why well the research has shown
that the number one fear of inmates
going into prison
is not to be beaten or shanked
or even raped but the number one
fear the inmates have going into the
prison system
is the stigma of dying alone
in prison when we
teach prisoners to care for each other
we take away that fear and we
alleviate one of the biggest stressors
in inmate life
shame and fear are pervasive inside
prisons
and by taking away that fear
prisoners are profoundly
changed the hands
that once hurt other people are now used
to help to heal
and to care so
why is prison hospice an idea worth
spreading
because my friends compassion
is worth spreading i’ve
taught 50 year old men
the difference between good touch
and bad touch
and then watch them fall apart
when they admit to me they’d never
even experienced the feeling
of a simple hug
hospice teaches them and reminds us
that death doesn’t care about our
station in life
how much we have in our bank account or
how many friends we have
hospice reminds us all that we all
breathe
the same air whether inside
or outside of a prison cell
i’d like to end today with a quote by
one of the most
famous prisoners in the world
nelson mandela said one
should not judge a nation until you’ve
been inside their prisons and jails
one cannot judge a nation
by how it treats its highest citizens
but its lowest ones
thank you
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you