The News Journal
October 20, 2006
Seven months ago, the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation of the prison health care system in Delaware -- where the rates of inmates dying of AIDS and suicide have been among the highest in the nation, and where hepatitis and skin infections are constant problems.
Eleven months ago, a former inmate's breast cancer went undetected while she was forced to wait five months for a mammogram inside Baylor Women's Correctional Institution, near New Castle.
Twelve months ago, an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease hit Sussex Correctional Institution, in Georgetown.
And yet little has changed for the inmates, a coalition of prison advocates said Thursday. On the anniversary of the coalition's founding, leaders of the group gathered in Wilmington's Rodney Square to lament a year's worth of what they called inaction by the leaders of Delaware.
There has been only "silence" from Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and "stonewalling" from the General Assembly, said co-founders of the Delaware Coalition for Prison Reform and Justice.
"We are here today to continue to raise the issue in the consciousness of prison crisis in our state," said the Rev. Christopher Bullock, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church. "We are going to continue to fight on behalf of the voiceless, those incarcerated and their families."
Bullock co-founded the coalition with state Sen. Charles Copeland, R-West Farms.
Despite a package of prison reform legislation introduced earlier this year, the General Assembly failed to pass significant legislation. And while Justice Department officials have been conducting interviews in Delaware and examining medical records, federal officials have consistently declined to comment on the status the investigation. On Thursday, they again declined comment.
Dover lawyer Steve Hampton, who represents several inmates and their families in lawsuits against the Department of Correction, said little has changed in Delaware's prisons.
"I don't think it's gotten any better, and it may have gotten worse," he said. "It takes forever to get sick call. Follow-up visits are inadequate, based on what I've seen in inmate records, and they don't receive medication on a regular basis."
Hampton represented the family of Anthony Pierce, who became known as "the brother with two heads" as an inmate at Sussex Correctional Institution. Pierce, who was profiled in a series of articles by The News Journal, died from a brain tumor after his condition was mishandled by prison medical staff. The state settled a wrongful death lawsuit in a confidential agreement last year.
Hampton has been told that federal investigators have visited prison facilities in New Castle County, and are coming back this month to visit prisons in Kent and Sussex counties.
Several well-meaning physicians have come and gone since the federal investigation began, Hampton said.
"There was a female doctor there for a while who really cared and tried to order the right stuff for the inmates," he said. "They just ignored her orders, and she quit. It's a horrible situation, and I don't see any beacons of light out there other than Rev. Bullock, Copeland and a handful of others. No one in state government is lifting a finger to help."
Minner declined to comment for this article.
In a statement, Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley W. Taylor Jr. said, "The Department is working diligently to identify, address, and correct problems in the provision of medical and mental health care to inmates, and is fully cooperating with the United States Department of Justice in connection with its investigation of medical and mental health care in the Department's prison facilities."
At Thursday's gathering, Bullock andCopeland were joined by state Rep. Hazel Plant, D-Wilmington Central, and New Castle Councilman Penrose Hollins. The coalition members, along with several family members whose relatives are incarcerated, held a moment of silence to remember inmates who have died in state custody.
"It's appropriate that Reverend Bullock talked about a moment of silence," Copeland said. "Because all we're getting from the administration and the General Assembly is silence."
Copeland said he plans to re-introduce legislation in January that would create a task force of experts to examine prison conditions -- legislation he said was stonewalled by Minner and her supporters in the last session.
Plant said she has recently interviewed inmates at the Delaware Correctional Center near Smyrna and Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington. "It is a disgrace how the inmates in there are suffering," she said. "There's no reason for guys to be laying on the floor, suffering severe illnesses, and they can't even get an aspirin."
Bullock and other members of the coalition remain hopeful conditions will improve as a result of the Justice Department probe. The federal investigation, conducted by the Special Litigation Section of the department's Civil Rights Division, could forever change the way Delaware treats its 6,800 inmates, though the process often takes months or years to reach a conclusion.
For six months in 2005, The News Journal examined conditions of care within the state's prisons. In late September 2005, the newspaper published a series of articles highlighting AIDS-related inmate deaths and suicides during the past four years; allegations by inmates of poor medical treatment for cancer, meningitis and hepatitis; and a no-bid $25.9 million contract awarded to St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services to manage health care in the state's prisons.
The series revealed:
•Dr. Janet Kramer, of Wilmington, an expert in prison health care, said inmates should be screened for hepatitis C and HIV. But pretrial and convicted inmates in Delaware are not routinely screened when they are sent to prison or when they leave. Delaware prisons have become incubators for new strains of the AIDS virus, creating a public health crisis, experts say.
•Former prison doctor Ramesh Vemulapalli said a private medical company ordered him to treat inmates for HIV or hepatitis C, but not both.
•The state does not routinely conduct autopsies on inmates who die in prison or those hospitalized at the time of their death, a policy the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners believes prevents evaluation of the quality of prison medical treatment. And if it does conduct autopsies, the results are sent to the medical vendor, not the prison.
•Dr. Robert Cohen, an expert in prison health care whom state and federal courts have appointed to monitor prisons in five states, said Delaware should investigate medical malpractice claims. Instead, the state's medical board occasionally takes complaints from inmates and their families about prison health care professionals, but it is only an advisory panel.
Contact investigative reporter Lee Williams at 324-2362 or lwilliams@delawareonline.com. Contact Esteban Parra at 324-2299 or eparra@delawareonline.com.
