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KALAMAZOO -- The use of four-point restraints as punishment for prison inmates meets the American Medical Association's definition of torture and should be discontinued, a doctor appointed by a federal judge to monitor health care in Michigan's prisons testified Friday. The continued use of restraints is "likely to result in future deaths," Robert Cohen warned U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen. He blamed the Aug. 6 death of Timothy Joe Souders, a 21-year-old mentally ill inmate, on the fact he was shackled atop a steel table in the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson for most of four days during a heat wave. "While naked in bed, he was found to be lying in his own urine and feces," Cohen said, adding that Souders' "condition during a heat wave required constant monitoring ... There should be no policy for maintaining prisoners in punitive restraints. It was that policy that led to his death." After Cohen's testimony, attorney Elizabeth Alexander, representing inmates in the class action lawsuit, asked Enslen to issue an order temporarily barring the state Corrections Department from using restraints to punish prisoners. Enslen appeared inclined to issue the order, but Assistant Attorney General Peter Govorchin stepped outside the courtroom to call state Corrections Director Patricia Caruso about offering a voluntary moratorium on the use of restraints. Afterward, the attorneys met with Enslen behind closed doors, and later would not say whether an agreement had been reached to stop restraining prisoners as punishment. Cohen's testimony came at the end of a three-day hearing in a lawsuit aimed at forcing the state to improve the care of medically and mentally ill prisoners. The allegations include: The hospital and other medical units in the Jackson prison complex are understaffed by doctors and nurses. Written requests by inmates for medical help often are delayed
for several days or ignored. Prescriptions for serious illnesses often go unfilled for several days. Last May and June, critical medications for several inmates were not provided while the Jackson prison complex was in transition from its own staff of pharmacists to a private firm called Pharmacorp. One inmate testified his medication for glaucoma and migraine headaches was withheld as punishment because he talked with attorneys in the case. Only while he was in court and on the stand Wednesday did a guard hand him his medication. Some of the responsibility rests with Correctional Medical Services, the for-profit corporation that provides care for prisoners under a contract with the state, testified Jerry Walden, an Ann Arbor physician called as an expert witness for the inmates. "There seems to be an indifference about care," Walden said, "and I'm concerned about that." Send e-mail to the author: pshellenbarger@grpress.com |
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