Substantial
evidence supports the charge of systematic prisoner abuse
at the Yazoo Low prison and throughout the prison system. These are
not just
the isolated instances officials claim.
A
number of web sites report similar stories about prisons in various
parts of the country. Sometimes it involves overt abuse, such as
beatings, but frequently it takes the form of various kinds of
deprivation or neglect: withholding medical treatment, adequate
nutrition, clothing, or bedding, for example, or by arbitrary
punishment for imaginary infractions, solitary confinement for
extended periods, moving inmates to a prison far from home, or
waiting until family members fly in from a distant location to visit
and then denying them entry. Jay
Kimball says, “Yazoo Low Prison operates to deliberately
aggravate, frustrate, intimidate, confuse, anger and cause friction
between prisoners while Coleman Low and Coleman/Medium Security
Prisons do NOT.”
Witholding
medical treatment has resulted in numerous deaths. On his now-defunct website,
discovery-experimental.com, Kimball listed
forty-nine victims of medical neglect/torture, with details of their cases, including his own. The other
men are either dead, still suffering, or their current status is
unknown. Kimball says, “BOP medical staff told Kimball their
‘directive’ is: they must ‘appear’ to be providing
professional medical care even though they are ‘ordered’ not to
provide such.”
Two
doctors who refused to condone this neglect have quit or been fired.
Jo Kimball, Jay's wife, says that the former medical director at Yazoo City,
Brenda Hines, quit because of the way medical care was being
withheld. Dr. Hines runs several psychiatric clinics in Florida. The
medical unit at Yazoo City operated under her license.
Another
doctor, Dr. A. Traore, was ordered by Dr. Hines’s successor,
Anthony Chambers, to sign an inmate’s death certificate, according
to which the inmate died of natural causes. The web site says
Chambers is “unlicensed and not board certified as an MD by any
state within the United States.” Because the inmate actually died
of medical neglect, Dr. Traore refused to sign the certificate and
was fired.
Another
example of prisoner abuse involves a food strike at Yazoo City and
its aftermath. The food was so inedible (e.g., green luncheon meat)
that last April, the inmates conducted a food strike. They just
didn’t eat lunch one day. Retribution was swift and harsh — Jo
Kimball has
produced a 15-page memo about what occurred. Subsequently, she says,
a number of inmates were transferred to medium-security prisons (for
not eating lunch).
Kimball’s
web site has letters from several inmates victimized by the strike.
One says, “I have also been sitting in a 6X9 cell alone for the
last two months, getting fed through a food slot, 23 hours a day.”
Another says, “I am still being held here at F.C.I Talladega in
Special Houing Unit with only litter privilege, like the phone only
Sat an Sun only and rec one hour a day from Mon-Fri in one man cages
like animals and in rooms all day by yourself like beast. I beg for
mercy ever night and day ...”
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