MCSO: Shackling is shocking, unjust, and unacceptable.

Cleaning out my draft bins and came across this - I remember working for days on it. I don't know what else I was going to do with this before posting it; maybe tone down the rhetoric? no, I don't think that was it. In any event, I'm putting it up as is - this is from January 29.
---------------
I've posted on the shackling of women going into labor a couple of times before. I'm sure I will be doing so again. Anyone who is interested in this issue should get on the list-serve for UNSHACKLE. They're a collective of activists who do a considerable amount of advocacy and networking around a range of prisoner health care issues.


I find the number of women who have to give birth in the custody of the state disturbing, but this practice of shackling women prisoners in labor is not unique to Sheriff Joe by any means, or limited to minorities. Maricopa County needs to get on the ball and change the way they do "business". The state legislature, actually, should outlaw this practice in every county before the feds have to do it; the legislature here seems pretty quick to outlaw everything else. The practice inflicts considerable pain and sometimes lasting injury, and is finally being recognized as institutionalized violence against women.   Policies and laws are being changed very quickly across the nation as more and more "mainstream" women find out about it and rise up in outrage that this is what we do to women at a time when they pose the least possible threat to anyone.
 


As of a month ago, women in Arpaio's jail were still being shackled by the MCSO during childbirth - US citizens as well as migrants. The women interviewed for this article speak well to why this practice needs to be changed. Don't take too long fixing this stuff, Sheriff - only men like you would still be so clueless as to what the problem is with shackling during labor and delivery, or so spiteful towards women as to proceed with such a practice anyway.


I have a problem when our lawmakers and lawmen spend our money chasing down and imprisoning impoverished people of any nation (or none) - tearing families apart in the process - who were driven to their criminal activity by unemployment, disability, hunger, addiction, or the need to pay rent to keep their family off the street another day. To then subject them to this kind of treatment is totally unacceptable to this American. 

Yeah, this is my America, too.


This isn't a Left or Right thing, really - it's a human rights thing that we all share responsibility for. Voces por la Vida is trying to end the practice of shackling women going into labor. I know all about media bias and blackouts, but where are the progressive women's rights groups in this state? Why aren't we hearing more from them on this?

-------

* Note that Russ Pearce is mentioned below for authoring racist legislation via "citizen's initiative," Prop 100. He's threatened to do that again if he doesn't get his way with SB 1070. Of course, Pearce and his buddies have more money than the rest of us for that kind of thing, which makes the "citizen" part of the ballot initiative sound pretty hollow. At least his people will have to expend a lot of money to deny it every time we shine some light on the truth. Sooner or later maybe they'll realize it would be better invested in helping people. We're trying to buy food and medicine and put our kids through school - our speech is one of the few things left we have that is supposed to be "free"...though I honestly don't know anyone who has told the truth about this place and not had to pay some kind of a price for it. 

The rest of Arizona would  probably be wise to leave Maricopa County politicians off their list of potential candidates for 2010 state office until we start treating people better and get this corruption/retaliation thing gets sorted out.

-----------------------

Pregnant and Shackled: Hard Labor for Arizona's Immigrants

By Valeria Fernandez, New America Media
Posted on January 28, 2010
http://www.alternet .org/story/ 145428/

PHOENIX, Ariz.-- Miriam Mendiola-Martinez, an undocumented immigrant charged with using someone else´s identity to work, gave birth to a boy on Dec. 21 at Maricopa Medical Center. After her C-section, she was shackled for two days to her hospital bed. She was not allowed to nurse her baby. And when guards walked her out of the hospital in shackles, she had no idea what officials had done with her child.

Like Mendiola-Martinez, pregnant inmates in Maricopa County Jail are routinely denied bond because they are undocumented immigrants. That means they can´t get out of jail for their childbirth, even if they are awaiting trial for a minor offense.

In some cases, undocumented immigrants are shackled as they are transported to the jail-contracted hospital, and shackled during and after childbirth.

Hospital authorities don't control this practice and medical personnel involved in these cases declined to be interviewed.

All hospitalized inmates are treated in the same manner as Mendiola-Martinez, according to Lt. Brain Lee, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Sheriff´s Office. He said she had a "soft restraint" attached on one leg to her bed to prevent escape.

That soft restraint was a 12-foot-long chain.

"I could barely walk, I don´t think I could have escaped or even dared to run. I don´t think there was a need for them to do that," said 34-year-old Mendiola-Martinez.

She says she was shackled during the two last months of her pregnancy too. Every time she had a pre-natal appointment, she waited in a small un-ventilated room with 20 other women. She had to sit in the floor. The chains were heavy and hurt her waist. Mendiola-Martinez often wept. She feared that her sadness could hurt the baby.

Unequal Justice

Mendiola´s story would have been different if she hadn´t been undocumented. She would have been released on bond before her baby was born because she had committed a non-violent crime, according to David Black, a criminal defense attorney who took her case pro-bono.

But in November 2006, Arizona voters approved a law that denies undocumented immigrants the right to post bail. Proposition 100 was authored by Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, as a way to keep undocumented immigrants who had been charged with "serious crimes" from being released.

The Arizona legislature included among those accusations minor offenses like possession of false documents, which undocumented immigrants frequently use to obtain employment.

The law, which is unique in the nation, is being challenged in the U.S. District Court of Arizona by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the basis that it violates the Constitution by unjustly denying a select group of people a fair hearing. The lawsuit, however, doesn´t include the cases of pregnant women.

"I think Prop. 100 puts migrant women at a disadvantage and treats them unfairly," said Bob McWhirter, a senior attorney with the Maricopa Legal Defender´s office.

About 1,500 pregnant women come through the Maricopa County Estrella jail every year. In 2009, 35 of them gave birth while in custody, according to Maricopa Medical Center records. More than 70 percent of the women detained in Maricopa County jails are accused of non-violent crimes and haven´t been sentenced yet. About 11 percent of them are undocumented immigrants. Health and county authorities say they don´t keep records on the immigration status or ethnicity of the women who give birth.

In October 2008, a federal judge ruled that conditions at the Maricopa County Jail, overseen by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, were unconstitutional and jeopardized the health and safety of the prisoners. The judge ordered jail officials to ensure that detainees received proper medical care, medicine and food that complied with federal standards. That same year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care said the county´s jails did not comply with federal standards due to their failure to submit reports on jail conditions.

More Shackling Cases

Although Mendiola-Martinez´s story is not unique, it is difficult to track how many other women have shared her experience because most of them have been deported. Yet other detainees attest to the poor treatment of pregnant immigrants inside the county jails.

In October 2008, Alma Chacón, an undocumented immigrant arrested during a traffic stop for having outstanding unpaid tickets, delivered her baby in a "forensic restraint," according to hospital records. Chacón said detention officers shackled her hands and legs during childbirth. She couldn´t nurse or hold her baby until she was released from immigration custody almost 70 days later.

Chacón´s case caught the attention of the Federal Department of Justice, which is currently conducting a civil rights investigation into Sheriff Joe Arpaio´s office.

The sheriff´s office says it doesn´t have a policy regarding the shackling of pregnant women. Spokesperson Aaron Douglas said they had no intention of changing the practice. But when questioned directly by New America Media about these cases, Arpaio said that everything was done "legally." Yet, he added, he may consider reviewing the practice.

Still, critics point out that pregnant inmates who have been sentenced to state prison are treated better than inmates who are awaiting their sentencing in Maricopa County jails.

The Arizona Department of Corrections, which oversees state prison inmates, initiated a policy in 2003 that states: "A pregnant women will not be restrained in any manner while in labor, while giving birth, or during the postpartum recovery period."

In 2008, the Federal Bureau of Prisons barred the shackling of pregnant inmates in federal prisons except when it was necessary for security concerns. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doesn´t have a specific policy prohibiting their use. But advocates at the Rebecca Project, which is part of a national anti-shackling coalition, said they are in conversation with ICE to put regulations in place.

The practice of shackling women during childbirth is frowned upon by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. They say that shackling women during labor, delivery and post-partum is dangerous to a woman´s health and that of her unborn child.

Maricopa County is not unique in the practice of shackling pregnant women. Only six states in the nation have laws regulating the use of restraints on pregnant inmates: California, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Texas and Vermont.

Advocates are hoping to include Arizona on the list.

Voces por la Vida, a pro-life group in Phoenix directed by Rosie Villegas-Smith, is leading the charge for anti-shackling legislation.

"Undocumented women are the most vulnerable here because they don´t have a right to be released on bond," she said.

Villegas-Smith says Arizona lawmakers are endangering the health of women and children in the name of fighting illegal immigration.

"I think a distinction has to be made and some humanity brought into Maricopa County laws, to allow [undocumented] nursing mothers and pregnant women to have their children outside of detention," said Delia Salvatierra, Mendiola´s immigration attorney.

When contacted by New America Media, Rep. Martha Garcia, D-Phoenix, said she would try to introduce a bill to ban the use of shackling.

"My main concern is that women are traumatized by being shackled and what this does to their babies, too," said the legislator, who is involved in the public health outreach program Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies.

"It makes me really angry that this is happening in the state of Arizona, because I believe the treatment of immigrants is worse here than anywhere else," Garcia added.

The issue will be hard to push in the Arizona state legislature. Over the last five years, conservative Republicans have supported a series of anti-immigrant laws, aimed at creating a hostile environment in the state to push migrants out.

The most recently enacted law, House Bill 2008, requires state employees to report immigrants who apply for public benefits to ICE. The law, sponsored by Republican leadership as part of a special session budget package, is causing pregnant immigrant women to be afraid of requesting free pre-natal services and health care.

Humanitarian Release

On Dec. 24, the date of her sentencing, Mendiola-Martinez was brought into the courtroom in a wheel chair, her hands and legs shackled.

"It was never my intention to hurt the victim. Please forgive me and let me go back to my children," she told the judge. She was sentenced to time served and two years of probation. ICE didn´t take her into custody after her release from jail for "humanitarian reasons," according to Vincent Piccard, a spokesperson for that agency.

Mendiola-Martinez was able to hold her baby again on Christmas Day. She takes joy in being with him and smiles when she watches him sleep. Secretly, though, she searches his face for any sign that her depression in jail might have had a negative effect on him while he was in her womb. Her children are U.S. citizens, but her future in the country where she´s lived for the past 15 years is still uncertain.

"I wish they would change things," she said of current immigration laws. "Because when they do this to us, they do it to our children."

© 2010 New America Media All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet .org/story/ 145428/

Arpaio Better Clean Up That Jail...

No matter how the MCSO wants to make the loss of accreditation last year out to be a problem of just Correctional Health Services, it goes way deeper than that - right to the heart of how much contempt Arpaio and his gang of thugs treat prisoners and families with, as well as those who advocate for them. 
   
This article is kind of suspicious for what it lacks: more info on the atrocious care people received because of gross medical negligence and incompetence, indifference among guards when prisoners have been sick and begging for help, and the overall environment in the jails creating life-threatening emergencies. This version of this report would have us thinking that the only thing causing Correctional Health Services’ to fail in providing even the basic constitutionally mandated standards of medical care to prisoners, in fact, is their lack of modernization and efficiency. 

Wake up, Arizona Republic! How can you swallow that without a question?


If it weren’t so criminal it would be almost comical to watch MCSO make themselves out to be the victim who was left out of the loop, here - they were really trying to improve health care services and championing prisoners’ rights in there, I’m sure. Sheriff Joe has staked his reputation on how cheap he be, how cruel he can be, and how racist and misogynistic he is in a way that so bizarrely appealing to some people that even a handful of Latinos and a whole lot of women adore him.

Adore him. Hmm. He’s as sweet and cuddly as a slave holding minister who pays someone else to do the whipping while he and his buddies Thomas and Pearce figure out how to rein in the ones they can’t enslave - especially us women...hmm. Criminalization and mass incarceration seems to have been working pretty well for them – why veer from that plan? That “Safe Cities” thing Pearce has got going on - It’s scary. Kind of Red Scary. Read about it a couple of posts down.

All this about the communication problem, by the way, is smokescreen: the real problem at the jail across the board is the dehumanization of prisoners and the county's unwillingness to provide people with the medical care they need despite being so quick to deprive them of their freedom. They don’t even provide them with basic daily necessities, in fact, if they don’t feel like it. 

Here’s dinner conversation from the women’s jail, to give you a good sense of just how dehumanized they are over there. Not long ago a friend went to visit her daughter there, and found her wearing clothes that had been blood-soaked for two days. She didn't have money in her jail account to buy personal hygiene supplies, so she was at the mercy of guards (who undoubtedly mocked her) as to when she received even a napkin, a shower or fresh clothes. Guess she pissed the wrong one off. Or maybe they really just collectively didn’t give a shit, or do that kind of thing for entertainment. Toilet paper is rationed and must then be paid for, too. And, of course, you get a bill for your room and board as you leave.

That kind of humiliating treatment sounds like the rule there, not the exception - if you're a poor woman, anyway. How can they treat women that way and there not be outrage in this community? Is it really ignorance? If so, then I think it is by choice, and the media has played along. Something is wrong with the women in power, here – with all of us - to be letting this happen to our sisters every day without lifting a collective voice in resistance to it. That’s a fundamental violation of basic human rights - leaving a prisoner that way, without the resources to even keep herself clean. We would be outraged and calling the US State Department if they did that in Burma to our comrade Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. They're doing to our sisters and moms and daughters right here.

Then there's the fact that such gross neglect also puts every single guard and prisoner in there at risk. If this is standard operating procedure for the MCSO, public health had better expect more of a HEP C problem than they already know about. What exactly is the jail policy about disinfecting and containing areas affected by blood and bodily fluids? Surely they have one. Surely it is also in their policies that “women prisoners should have unrestricted access to personal hygiene items as needed to prevent risk of bloodborne disease transmission when menstruating.” Simple enough. Feel free to use that, Joe, if you don’t quite know how to word it. You’ve got about a week to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

As for the rest of this article – of course the county bureaucrats and administrators don’t care about those of us who are really struggling out here. Except Mary Rose Wilcox. She gets credit for kicking Sheriff Joe’s ass even though he’s trying to imprison her. 

Anyway, we bought medical care for prisoners on the cheap because the feds made us, otherwise they’d get no care at all. The same with the state (actually, they pay far more than they should for what they get, but you know how important it is to let business turn a little profit - who cares at whose expense they make it?). So, we got what we paid for, and we were just fine with people dying it until the program was disaccredited. I guess that increases the probability of a lawsuit. 

MCSO tried to shut prisoners up when they complained before it got that bad, but there’s still a mile long trail of grievances and lawsuits reflecting a pervasive pattern of neglect and avoidable injury and deaths. MCSO has been party to it all along - as has the rest of county government, it appears. They knew exactly what was happening to our prisoners, and they let it happen anyway, as if once we're criminalized - or even just accused - we're all suddenly disposable people. They should all take responsibility for changing that. We are human, too.

-------------------------------------

Maricopa County jail workers lacking health-care tools

Information on inmates not gathered, stored or shared properly, report says

by Yvonne Wingett and JJ Hensley - Jan. 7, 2010 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic .

Maricopa County jail workers don't have the tools to collect and manage health-care data for inmates, according to a report from a consulting group the Sheriff's Office brought in last summer.

The report from the National Institute of Corrections found the same systemic problems that have plagued the jail health-care system for more than a decade: Detention officers and health-care workers have a difficult time communicating with each other, and their reliance on handwritten medical records and a patchwork of computer systems can lead to medical problems for inmates.

The report, which the county released to The Arizona Republic in response to a public-records request, also noted the system struggles because there are no contracts or working agreements between sheriff's personnel and employees of Correctional Health Services, the agency that provides health care in the jails.

The Sheriff's Office requested the report to ensure employees were gathering the health-care data they needed from the 130,000 inmates who move through the system each year, Deputy Chief MaryEllen Sheppard said.

The consultant's recommendations likely will fall by the wayside, just as other expert advice has, until Sheriff's Office officials and health-care workers resolve their legal battles over control of the jail health-care system.

Sheppard said the consultants, from a governmental group that assists correctional agencies, did not charge for the review and were brought in after Correctional Health Services lost accreditation last year.

"To have accreditation be pulled, that was a blow. We didn't want to be in that position again," Sheppard said.

The lack of accreditation is at the heart of a lawsuit Sheriff Joe Arpaio filed in the fall, requesting that a judge take responsibility for inmate health care from Correctional Health Services and give it to the Sheriff's Office.

The report was compiled using documents, interviews, data and visits to the jails from June 15 to 18. Several of the findings mirror those in a Republic investigation of Correctional Health Services.

With a budget of about $49 million, Correctional Health Services treats the sick and injured, tracks medical conditions, and prevents diseases inside of the county's six jail facilities.

The National Institute of Corrections' report cited the lack of an electronic-records system to centralize and manage patient paperwork as a key problem. The county Board of Supervisors has not acted on repeated recommendations to install such a system, even when faced with hundreds of lawsuits involving inmate health care, the loss of accreditation and consultant recommendations.

Top county officials this week said that they continue to explore ways to come up with the millions of dollars needed to buy and maintain an electronic system.

Poor communication between the Sheriff's Office and Correctional Health Services also is identified in the report as a key problem.

The Republic investigation found that the same communication breakdown has led to persistent miscues and errors in treating patients in a timely manner, accurately diagnosing conditions and adequately treating inmates as required under the Constitution. Health-care-related lawsuits and settlements from inmates and their families have cost taxpayers more than $13 million in the past 10 years.

Sheppard said the lack of communication also left sheriff's officials feeling blindsided when they learned last year that the National Commission on Correctional Health Care had stripped the county's jails of accreditation.

Sheppard said she asked the National Institute of Corrections to review the system to ensure sheriff's administrators wouldn't be caught off-guard the next time the system's supposed shortcomings were exposed.

"It shouldn't be a surprise to get an evaluation that says standards aren't being met. In my opinion, we should have the data systems in place to monitor our own practices," Sheppard said.

Correspondence from Betty Adams, the director of Correctional Health, indicates that she reapplied in August for accreditation from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. On Dec. 24, Adams submitted paperwork to the state Department of Health Services, saying that an outside agency, CorrectHealth, reviewed jail health-care operations to comply with state law.

Wade Swanson, director of the county's civil-litigation department, said the county would not release a full copy of the CorrectHealth report, saying it is not a public record: "That is information we believe is protected."

Adams said she was unavailable for an interview; she did not respond to a request to make another health-care official available for questions.

While improving communication holds the key to improving health care in the jails, according to the report, those efforts are complicated by the sheriff's pending lawsuit.

Sheppard said the two sides had improved information-sharing, but the information flow to the Sheriff's Office has dried up following an audit the county commissioned in November.

"Is it 100 percent where we want to be? No," Sheppard said. "But to suggest that there hasn't been improvement, I don't think that's fair.

Arpayaso! More MCSO Raids and Racial Profiling

Gotta go check out the rest of this blog entry by Stephen Lemons at the New Times' Feathered Bastard:

Joe Arpaio Stages Anti-Immigrant Sweep for Out-of-State Camera Crew; Plus, Arpaio Meets with Joe Biden? (w/Updates)

By Stephen Lemons in Feathered Bastard

Mon., Nov. 16 2009 @ 11:15AM

Another Arpaio media stunt; and Arpaio meets with Veep Joe Biden?

Sheriff Joe's PR flacks are working overtime. They just sent out a press advisory on a new countywide anti-immigration dragnet beginning today. What they don't tell you in the statement is that Arpaio and Co. have set up the sweep for an out-of-town camera crew from a major broadcast network, according to my sources.

My sources alerted me this weekend that the sweep would be happening today, and that it was being done at the behest of a national news show. I've not yet been able to confirm the news show involved. (UPDATE 11/16/09 2:10PM: I now have two sources telling me that the news show involved is ABC national. They have yet to return my call for a comment.)

GO TO REST OF ARTICLE.(must for updates)