This is the slightly edited version of the letter I sent
off to the Mississippi Kidney Foundation today, as well as to some
media connections and other possible allies. It's been posted at
Mississippi Prison Watch as well.
I've been ill for awhile and may not be
following up for a few days, and worry that everyone will just think
someone else is acting on this - in which case no one will - so everyone needs to, and report what you've done to the Scott Sisters'
campaign. Please use this post and email copies of this letter wherever
else you can think of that these concerns need to be raised. Just click
on the email icon at the bottom.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Margaret Jean Plews
Prison Abolitionist
Arizona Prison Watch
1809 East Willetta St.
Phoenix, AZ 85006
480-580-6807
February 7, 2010
Gail G. Sweat, Executive Director
Lynda Richards, Director of Patient Services
Mississippi Kidney Foundation
3000 Old Canton, Suite 110
Jackson, MS 39216
PO Box 55802
Jackson, MS 39296
Dear Gail and Lynda,
I wasn't sure who best to address this to,
but didn't want it getting lost in the void, so I'm sending it to you
both if I can find your emails, and via snail mail. This is a fairly
complicated story, so if it's new to you, hold on. I’m also passing it
on to a few other folks, in hopes they might have some ideas or be able
to offer support. I really hope that once we figure out exactly what’s
going on with care for kidney patients in the Mississippi Department of
Corrections (which is contracting medical services to Wexford)
Professor Capron
in particular will help facilitate some kind of critical analysis and
dialogue about the ethical issues involved in treating kidney patients
who are prisoners – this is not an issue unique to Mississippi. That’s
just where Mrs. Rasco’s daughter happens to be dying right now.
I don't know if anyone has already contacted you about
Jamie Scott or issues with dialysis care for
Mississippi
state prisoners in general yet. I don't know my way around your state:
your politics, charities, media, etc., and have already stepped on a
few toes. I'm a prisoner rights activist in
Arizona
(from Michigan, actually) with a few websites critiquing the prison
industrial complex, and I hear from prisoners and families in trouble
all the time, including the Scotts, asking for help by amplifying their
voices and reaching out to others. The Scott family has been working on
getting these women exonerated for awhile, but now there's a crisis
with one of the sisters going into renal failure. They really need your
help.
I'm concerned that the difficulty the
family is having getting a response on Jamie's care is partly because
it's not clear they or Jamie really know what her diagnosis or
prognosis is. I think they're all so terribly traumatized, and now
desperately afraid that they'll lose Jamie after working so hard for
long on her freedom. But they need to be able to articulate what's
going on medically in order to know what kind of treatment to ask for,
or who to turn to for help.
As is so often the fashion when others
control our health care, poor women (especially of color) are the last
to know about our medical conditions and treatment options, and we pay
the highest price for it. I'm worried that Jamie's criminalized,
marginalized status already places her at considerable risk; not many
people value the humanity or gifts of a woman doing double-life in a Mississippi state prison. Add to that her race, poverty, family's limited resources; some would say she's lucky to get dialysis at all.
We need to get someone in there who can
both educate Jamie and her family about kidney disease, what
appropriate care is (which for all I know she’s actually receiving,
depending on her diagnosis and prognosis), and how she can assert her
rights as a patient while still a prisoner, as well as someone who can
help get the resources needed into the MDOC to provide the rest of
these women with appropriate medical care. I'm an antagonist, an
outside instigator, an organizer - this family needs you, not me,
fighting for them on the local level. I’ve probably already pissed a
few people off.
Besides, I’m also fairly ill myself right now, and don’t know that I can see this family through.
This also isn't about crime and punishment
or “prisoner rights” so much as it’s about who we decide is deserving
and undeserving of resources we’ve decided to ration in this world –
resources that could be made more plentiful - and therefore whom is
allowed to suffer, and for whom is such suffering “unconstitutional”. I
know that’s pretty loaded, but I don’t know how you can possibly avoid
addressing that in your business, anyway. It seems like a conversation
that the larger community should be having together, with the Scott
Sisters and their mom participating. Especially now, with state
services for the poor being hit so hard across the country.
If you can somehow manage to lead the
community in an outreach to that prison – refusing to take no for an
answer when you knock on the door - and help connect the women in there
with the same kind of educational, medical and peer support that free
women might be able to access, you could make an impact on women’s
health care in jails and prisons that I could never equal in all my
years of community activism. It will improve their likelihood of
survival while in prison, their success transitioning back to the
community once released from prison, and their sense of human
connection if it turns out that they are going to be dying in prison.
At least then, perhaps, their last days will be witnessed, and even if
they have no family left to grieve them, someone can speak to their
struggle and courage. That matters a great deal to people; most of us
take it for granted, though.
You are in a unique position to command
the attention and respect of people who will just otherwise ignore this
family and let Jamie suffer and die. I'm not suggesting that you charge
in with any accusations - just please find out from the Scotts' what's
up, try to find out what health care access is really like for women
there, and step back and assess the situation with
the MDOC and Wexford(chronically ill patients who could be maintained for years are a drag on profits, if allowed to linger.)
I suspect diabetes is a major issue for
many men and women in prison alike. I have a number of links to
research and documents about prisoner health care on my websites
(prison Abolitionist and Arizona Prison Watch). Whatever you think you
can do yourselves, please see who else there might be natural allies
for those women fighting for better health care, and speak publicly to
the issue of the treatment of prisoners with kidney disease. I don’t
know who else will speak for their health care rights; I’m afraid no
one even notices them there. Many more may step up if you do, first,
however.
You would be able to articulate the
consequences of Jamie not receiving proper care, in a way unlike
prisoner activists - most of whom don't know what it feels like to be
toxic and dying. You could gauge better than I could whether or not
withholding certain medical options might constitute cruel and unusual
punishment; you don’t have to be an attorney to question that – the
Supreme Court says the definition changes as society morally evolves. I
hope we’ve all come at least this far by now. If Jamie will authorize
the prison/medical services provider to discuss her diagnosis,
prognosis, and course of planned treatment with you with her, then you
would know whether or not she’s been offered treatment that’s
consistent with community standards of care. Most importantly, perhaps,
if Jamie and her family are at least well-informed, then perhaps they
do not need to be quite so afraid. There is already so much for them to
be afraid of.
At the very least these women should be
fully informed about their illness, treatment options, and rights – not
reminded of how expendable and of little value their lives are. They
matter to the people who love them, and to those whose lives they’ve
touched in positive ways. We have much to be thankful for, out here, to
the good souls in prison for life who help others make it through
intact, and not on a track right back there. It may well be that
Jamie's crisis is the catalyst that gets so much needed focus on the
critically and terminally ill in prison; without her voice, countless
others may suffer in invisibility. And her example of survival and
resistance is an inspiration to other women living and dying there,
too.
There’s more history on this at
Mississippi Prison Watch–
the latest post announcing my intent to contact you is in email format
below. I received the accompanying note from Jamie Scott's mother,
though, and wanted you to see it - to hear the urgency in her voice as
she's trying to save her daughter's life. I need to make a personal
connection with someone there, to know whether or not you’ll step up on
this as an advocate for Jamie and the other women there in terms of
their right to access health care. The whole issue of whether or not
the state would allow a prisoner to donate a kidney to another prisoner
troubles me. Especially while both prisoners still have wrongful
conviction cases hanging out there - that seems like taking the chance
of executing the innocent.
Please drop us a line and let us know if
you can do anything to help on this matter (Call me if you need to if I
don’t respond to email; I may not make it back to my computer in the
next few days.). You don’t need to comment on their convictions or
sentences – no one should be made to suffer needlessly or subjected to
substandard medical care when subject to the total custody and control
of the state. That's not a medical or legal judgment - it's a moral
one. It takes mainstream Americans to say that for anyone to listen,
however – not left-wing radicals like me.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Peggy Plews
480-580-6807
cc: Professor Alexander Capron, National Kidney Foundation
American Association of Kidney Patients
National Kidney Disease Education program
Mississippi ACLU
(and several Mississippi and national media outlets)
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
