Preface
The Story of Catherine
A friend suggested she write to a fellow named Robert. She decided to write to him as a friend. He wrote back. Their correspondence grew from polite conversation to deeper questions about life, love and family. Feelings of friendship led to stronger feelings of romantic attachment, until Catherine decided to visit Robert in person. Their face-to-face meeting confirmed their newfound feelings of love, and eventually, Robert and Catherine were married. There was only one difference between their story and many others. Robert was an inmate at a state prison. Their wedding took place inside the prison visiting room.
Robert was not serving a life sentence, and he had not committed a crime of violence. He had a projected release date they looked forward to. At the age of 42, Robert was sentenced to 10 years on seven different counts of possession and selling of marijuana, hashish and other illegal substances. He had a problem with addiction to certain drugs, but he convinced Catherine that he had changed. Their envisioned future together never came to pass, however, since Robert contracted a lethal form of cancer while he was incarcerated.
While his disease progressed, Catherine struggled to continue to visit her husband. His condition fostered no special treatment from the criminal justice system. She was allowed one hour of visitation every 14 days. Robert became progressively sicker and weaker. He one time collapsed upon entering the visitation room, which ended their visit that day. When he became so sick that he could no longer be wheeled to the visitation room, she walked all the way back through the prison, to visit him in his dormitory-style living area. Robert was not considered a dangerous criminal, so he lived in a minimum security area. Robert, in his wheelchair, was brought out into a hallway, where they sat for their visit as husband and wife.
Catherine became frustrated with what, in her opinion, was inadequate medical care for her husband’s condition. When his blood pressure sky rocketed, he was sent to the local hospital, then returned to the prison with pain medication. Back in the prison, the pain medication prescription issued by the hospital often did not materialize. If the prescription was found, the prison medical personnel refused to give it to him, on the premise that he might become addicted to it. At this point, Robert was a dying man with a progressively painful disease. Catherine resolved to fight for him to receive his pain medication, and fight for him to be allowed to come home to die. Three times the Parole Board recommended he be released. Three times the state governor vetoed his release. So Catherine decided to sue.
She filed a “Medical Indifference” lawsuit against the Department of Corrections and the individual doctors responsible for her husband’s care, and she continued to press for his release to spend the last of his days at home with his family. She asked hospital administrators if they would call her when he was brought in for the last time. They said they were only allowed to call her to claim the body. The wife of a dying prisoner is not allowed to spend the last hours of her husband’s life beside his bed in the hospital. Then she asked if the prison chaplain could be called in for his last hours, and was told that her husband would have to be aware enough to request the chaplain himself. Catherine won her medical indifference lawsuit regarding her husband’s inadequate medical care, but by the time she won it, he had already passed away.
During a routine visit, Catherine noticed her husband’s facial color being unusually red. After arriving at home that night, the phone rang. It was the hospital administrator, who said, “If you want to see your husband alive, you’d better get here fast. He was just admitted.” Catherine called her lawyer, who called prison administration, who relented to allow Catherine to be with her husband. She also called the local newspaper and television station. She sat beside his bed for the last 10 hours of his life. It was to be their longest, and their last, visit together. She made a promise to her husband to try to help other families of prisoners in similar circumstances. One half hour after his death, the Governor issued her a note, “Robert is happy now.” She saw the note as insincere, inappropriate and unusually cruel.
After her husband’s death, Catherine joined a support group for prisoner’s families. However, Catherine wanted to do more. She wanted to change legislation. She found another group and joined their national organization, but could not find a state chapter meeting regularly. At the encouragement of the national chapter president, she attended a regional meeting, where she was told the leader of her state chapter was resigning. They suggested she take over as state chapter leader. Catherine never considered herself an activist, but through her relationship with a prisoner, and a promise made to her dying husband, she now found herself the leader of an organization that would publically challenge or support legislation at the statehouse, foster public education and awareness of criminal justice issues, and fight for more humane treatment of inmates and their family members. She pursued contact with other community organizations. She invited them to her chapter meetings to tell the group about their activities. Then she would tell them about her group’s purpose. She fostered liaisons and coalition building. And she got things done.
She and some of her colleagues sued the local county jail and sheriff for receiving $3.5 million dollars in kickbacks from a phone company, for contracting with that company to handle all calls from prisoners going out to their families. Inmates do not receive calls. Phone calls from a prisoner go from each prisoner to an approved recipient, who must accept the charges for those calls. Families of prisoners pay some of the highest phone rates of anyone in the country, and those family members never committed any crime. Catherine and her colleagues won their lawsuit. As a result, phone call costs for families of prisoners in Catherine’s state were reduced.
Catherine’s story is one of many family members of a prisoner interviewed for this book, who experience shock and dismay at the harshness of treatment of inmates and their families who come to visit their loved one. They do not deny their loved one’s committing of a crime. Neither do they expect him or her to be treated like an animal while incarcerated in our overcrowded, violence-ridden state and federal prison systems. Though having no personal history of community activism, they find themselves involved in groups working on various prison reforms. Many of them feel they are fighting for their own loved one’s survival. This book is the story of 46 such individuals, who are involved in six different grassroots prison reform groups in five states around the country.
Doctor Grandma 