As the title indicates, I was given a choice: "Choose health care or your family." Forced to choose, I chose family, and was told, literally, "You made a choice, you picked your family, now you must suffer the consequences of that choice..."
In October, 2004, I was exiled by the Alaska Department of Corrections (ADOC) to a private, for-profit prison, located in Florence, Arizona, and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). This move has placed me thousands of miles from my home and family. Exile's cruelest facet is the lack of communication and visitation with my family. Frequent weekend visits with my wife, daughter and grandchild, mother, and friends, have been replaced by expensive telephone calls and infrequent visits that pose a financial burden that most in my family are incapable of bearing. Instead of taking a day trip or driving from our home in Anchorage to Seward and staying with family friends for the weekend while visiting, it now is necessary that vacation time from work must be arranged months in advance, and the cost of plane fare, rental cars, hotels and restaurant meals make visits all but impossible. Relevant to the matter at hand, I am also ill - I have active Hepatitis C and a marker in my blood indicative of liver tumors - and I am fighting with ADOC for proper treatment (See "Take Two Lies and Call Me in the Morning " ) .
During the period of April 30th to May 3rd, after seven months without seeing my wife, Michelle, we were finally going to be able see one another. In anticipation of, and nearly three weeks prior to, her arrival, I submitted a Request to the CCA Medical Department, asking that medical appointments not be scheduled during that period. Medical staff responded with "Noted." (Sick Call Request, dated 04/12/05)
What then happened is exactly what I, and my wife, expected: a medical appointment for a liver biopsy was scheduled during our visit. When ordered to report to Medical the evening prior to the appointment, my explanations that I had given them prior notice and that I hadn't seen my wife in seven months fell on deaf ears. Medical staff informed me that my choosing to visit was a 'refusal of treatment' and I was instructed to sign a refusal form. I spent the next day with my wife.
After visiting, I filed a Grievance, explaining that, as an Alaska prisoner, I have a right to both visitation and medical treatment, that I had given plenty of advance notice of my wife's visitation, and I requested that the biopsy be re-scheduled. (Prisoner Grievance, Log No. 05-0318)
I quoted from the Grievance Response in the first paragraph. Carl Richey, CCA's Standards Officer, stated in no uncertain terms:
"You made a choice, you picked family, now you must suffer the consequences of that choice..."
What more needs be said?
After receiving CCA's response, I filed a Grievance Appeal to ADOC's Director of Institutions, Mike Addington. Within his short reply is this gem:
"Testing will not be scheduled around visits. Visits must be scheduled around tests. Your appeal is denied."
At first blush, that actually sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Well, not so fast. Consider Director Addington's statement in light of the following facts: It took weeks to get a biopsy approved by ADOC, and then scheduled; it took five (5) months to be scheduled for an eye examination; and, I have presently been waiting seven (7) months to see an audiologist.
If I knew when any of those appointments were, or are scheduled to take place, then - THOSE APPOINTMENTS WOULD BE CANCELED - for security reasons, as the Director well knows. Since it would be a gross violation of security to inform prisoners when they are scheduled for appointments to clinics outside of the institution,
Director Addington's response can be described in one of two ways: it was either purposefully disingenuous or stupid. (Prisoner Grievance Appeal Statement, Log No-05-0318)
Alaska has shipped more than 750 of its prisoners to this distant desert prison, and the burden of maintaining community ties and familial relationships could not be greater without actually shipping us off-planet.
It costs thousands of dollars for a family member or friend to travel from Alaska to Arizona to visit their incarcerated loved one. Thousands of dollars that are wasted if, when visitors are able to make the journey, they are informed by CCA staff that they cannot visit.
Rather than conjure nonsensical responses to legitimate complaints brought to his attention, Director Addington could easily find a solution in the complaint: CCA Medical staff was informed well in advance of when visitation with family from Alaska was to take place. Having received that notification, could not the appointment have been scheduled accordingly? Considering the deprivations and costs to both prisoner and family, and the ease at which pen moves across the page in an appointment book, would that not be a solution equitable to all?
The Constitutional rights of Alaska's prisoners to both medical care and to visitation, as a component of their right to rehabilitation, need not be mutually exclusive, and under no circumstances should prisoners be forced to choose between the two. Demanding such a choice, under threat of its "consequences" is particularly unacceptable when the prisoner, of his own volition, took responsibility for his claim to both rights, by giving advance notice to CCA medical staff in order to prevent that very conflict.
Anthony L. Brown 7/2/5 CCA/FCCEditor's note: The decision to inform CCA of our impending visits before they happened and request that medical appointments not be scheduled during that time, sprung from 29 years of dealing with DOC (whether Alaska, FBOP, or in this case, CCA) staff, using every opportunity and device at their disposal to thwart visiting or any other kind of familial contact. This isn't the first, second, third, tenth or even fiftieth time that I've experienced this kind of undermining/subversion of familial contact or observed it happening to others. And, do I feel it was a coincidence as correctional officials would ultimately have you believe? My answer to that is a resounding NO!! We made this request because it's our experience that attempting to thwart family visiting and cause as much additional emotional pain to prisoners, plus pain and expense to their families as possible, is an unwritten policy with corrections...I love it when they validate my perceptions...and my contempt.