designed to a T

Josef Frank, textile design Bows, 1960. Linen, cotton.  Via Cooper-Hewitt.

Georges Hobeika

Georges Hobeika

Georges Hobeika

Giambattista Valli

Abuses in the prison system have affected my family, so I can at least speak from those experiences.

My father died in the prison system at the age of 45 due to liver failure (he was an alcoholic and had contracted Hepatitis C). I saw him on Christmas Day of 2007. He was sickly and gaunt, with a distended belly that protruded so intensely that it looked like he might birth triplets at any moment. He wasn’t getting the medical care he needed, no matter how much he requested it or how sick he got. He died two months later, alone in a hospital, shackled to a bed. I was his next-of-kin, and I was not notified that he was dying. The only communication I received from the Florida prison system was a call ten hours after my father’s death, informing me that inmate Marc Stage had “expired,” and asking if I would like to collect the body.

Along with the alcoholism, my father had a comorbid mental health diagnosis. I don’t know how much of a role it played in his experiences as an incarcerated person, outside of its manifestations getting him into the troubles that resulted in incarceration. I don’t know if he sought services. I don’t know if he suffered abuses related to his mental health.

Even with the research I’ve done on Rikers, I don’t know if reform or closure is a better answer. I don’t see either being achieved easily because of larger systemic ills.

As far as what the advocacy community can do, we can do what we do best: raise our voices, shake things up, study the system and infiltrate it to further expose the abuses the inmates are suffering, volunteer, spend time with the inmates, advocate for the ones who have no one to advocate for them, and fight, fight, fight until we achieve the change we seek.