Florida prisons are gang-filled hellholes, but few who can fix them seem to care | Opinion

I’ve been to prison scores of times. I always get out the same day.

I’m a civil rights lawyer who handles cases involving police and prison abuse. Sunday mornings I read my weekly news round-up: the 30 to 60 letters I get each week from inmates about beatings, stabbings, denial of medical care and retaliation for grievances.

Florida prisons are badly underfunded. Prisoners tell me short-staffing corrections positions allows well-organized gangs a freer hand while some prison officials turn a blind eye. Drugs flow into prison and are distributed by inmates who seem to move freely. Last I checked, there was no mandatory discipline for officers who let inmates in and out of unauthorized housing areas.

In 1984, there were about 20,000 people in Florida prisons. Now there are almost 100,000. Prison costs are rising faster than education costs. Today, Florida spends twice as much on a state prisoner as a public school student. It spends more on prisons than higher education. But don’t think we are getting a great deal for our prison dollars. Florida prisons are dangerous, riddled with gangs and drugs, have few education or drug programs, and offer little medical care.

Recently, it’s been about stabbings. Gangs virtually run some parts of the prison system. They move drugs and collect for nonpayment in blood. Stabbings are not always meant to be fatal. Gang members will say, “I wet him up,” meaning, “made him bleed.” But the stabbings often receive scant medical attention and little investigation. Prisoners say officers sometimes order “hits” for pay or favors or, alternatively, loudly announce to other prisoners that the target is a “snitch” or a “child molester.”

Payment for inflicting serious injury or death can be packs of cigarettes. If a prisoner seeks protective custody, gangs may have someone inside protective housing. If prison officials transfer an inmate away from trouble, gang members on the street will track him on the prison website and tell inmate gang members where he is. Protective management beds are limited. Some gang members who renounced their gang membership are now under death sentences from gang tribunals with no appeal.

With the advent of privatized healthcare in Florida prisons, doctors and nurses are also short-staffed. Then-Gov. Rick Scott promised to save $30 million a year — about 7 percent — by bringing in private healthcare companies. But contractors Corizon and Wexford did not keep their promises, and their contracts were terminated. Prison health costs are now much higher than before Scott’s “Seven Percent Savings” plan. And prison healthcare is still inadequate.

Prison is hardest on the elderly. They often are ill and disabled, easily extorted by predators. If they write grievances, they are labeled “writ-writers” and suffer retaliation. A wheelchair-bound prisoner can be terrorized by threats to take his wheelchair and place him in confinement, a cell the size of a parking space for 22-24 hours a day. Since confined inmates need escorts to see medical staff, pleas of medical or psychological emergencies are often ignored. Inmates cannot file lawsuits unless they complete a complex grievance process, and many say their grievances never make it out of confinement.

There is now one class-action lawsuit focusing on the abuse of solitary confinement and another one for violation by the Florida Department of Corrections of an agreement to accommodate disabled inmates. Class actions like these and earlier class actions to force the Florida Department of Corrections to treat hernias and hepatitis C, led by the Florida Justice Institute in Miami, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Disability Rights Florida, among others, have been life-savers. Literally.

A few years ago, a new hepatitis C medication came on the market, a 12-week cure, 95 percent effective. It saves lives. But Florida prisoners weren’t getting it. Of the prisoners who wrote me about untreated hepatitis C over the years, half are now dead. A federal judge called this history “sordid.” Thanks to the successful class action, aided by heroic whistleblowers, prisoners are now getting treated but huge medical damage and death have resulted from the denial and delay of treatment.

Florida jails have their own problems. Suicides are much more likely there than in prisons, and jails are ill-prepared to prevent them. People who are arrested while ill frequently can’t get their medications in the first days or weeks of confinement. Healthcare in many jails has also been privatized, and there is resistance to sending inmates to private hospitals that can be expensive but often needed. Again, people die, including those who have never been convicted of a criminal offense.

Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.” I have been there, and we are in trouble.

James V. Cook is a civil rights lawyer who practices in Florida and lives in Tallahassee.