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I looked for an emotional puking forum but couldn’t find one; I hope this forum works. Sorry it’s so long.
My wife is in prison; her sentence ended December 1st 2009 but she remains there. The parole board was given new powers a few years back that allow them to keep someone in if they either 1) have a poor parole plan, 2) have been a disciplinary problem while in prison or 3) are a continued present danger to themselves or society. They used door number three to keep her locked up. They determined, despite two independent psych reports to the contrary, that she remained a danger to herself or society. There was one psych report, done by the department of corrections psychologist that said she remained a danger. This psychologist has seen her twice, once twenty-three years ago for an hour when she was locked up, and once last year when she was about to be released. It’s political; if they release her and she does something wrong, it could end their career – if she is fine and they continue to keep her, it doesn’t touch them. Anyway, they told her to continue working on childhood issues that the DOC psychologist said in his report are ‘not conducive to insight related therapies’.
The DOC has no real budget for psychiatric care. Their policy is that they have many programs available as well as emergency care designed to take care of all of a persons needs but the reality of the situation is that her ‘recidivism score’ which is designed to determine her likelihood of re-offending is so low that she doesn’t qualify for any program she has not already taken and one on one care is reserved for those inmates who are in crisis which is defined as ‘a present danger to themselves or others’ and those one on one meetings are limited to only five sessions.
So here’s the thing, the parole board decides she can’t come home because she needs to work on these issues that make her a danger to herself or society but the institution decided that she doesn’t qualify for mental health care because she is not a present danger to herself or others. So now, in eleven months, she goes back in front of the parole board and hasn’t done what they told her to do. So, we decided to hire an outside psychiatrist to come in once a week during visiting and see her. It’s expensive, it’s costing a hour of therapy time plus an hour travel time and we’ve no insurance for this but we think it’s worth it. We found a doctor, she submitted a visiting form and was called down to an administrative office two days ago to be informed, “This isn’t going to happen.”
They are refusing mental health care and they are refusing to allow a doctor to come in as a visitor to see her and work on those remaining issues that would make her, according to them, a continued and present danger to society. Seriously?! So I call our attorney. He asks us to get it in writing. I make the call and the request, it’ll be another two weeks before she can go through the channels herself and we have been working on this for six months – time is running out. I say, pleasantly enough – we’ve been at this a long time and I know to be pleasant: “We understand that you are not going to allow an outside doctor to come in to work with her but I spoke with an (he is not technically ‘our’ attorney at this point. While he has done work for us before, we have not hired him for this yet) attorney and he asked if we could get the denial in writing. He responded, “Why are you both trying to cause so much trouble for yourselves? It’s all a waste of time and money if she is in seg.”
Seg is short for segregation, which is where inmates are sent for serious disciplinary infractions. His message was clear. If we pursue her rights through an attorney (there is a federal law allowing for ‘purchase of care’) then she will find herself with a serious disciplinary infraction that will prevent her from being paroled anyway. I hate these people.
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