Update on Ginny
Haven't heard from Ginny in over two months now because shit has hit the fan (yet again) at Lowell. Thankfully she's still in touch with others so that I know what's happening. The last few months there have been daily fights on Ginny's block with lots of mace sprayings to get inmates subdued. Whenever they spray somebody with mace, the whole
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I don't say this kind of stuff happens everywhere (I surely don't hope so!), but this was filmed by correctional officers so it does happen in some places. If all prisons are so good, why are Human Rights Watch and Amnesty all over them? They don't visit our prisons here... This article doesn't leave much to the imagination: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/14/usdom8583.htm
It sounds like the prison your dad works in is one of the better ones. None of the people I write to (I have 7 pen pals right now) have internet access. As far as I know, only a handful of prisons are experimenting with letting inmates correspond by e-mail. If it's successfull (which I really hope it will be), they might introduce it nation-wide.
I know that the food isn't quite what it's supposed to be in a large majority of the prisons. No fresh fruits or vegetables. Health care is simply a nightmare. Inmates die awaiting treatment because either the guards refuse to transfer the inmate to the medical wing or because the medical staff is horribly under-staffed (or the prison horribly over-crowded, take your pick). Many prisons are violating the very few rights inmates have. I can only think of receiving and sending mail being a right, actually. Phone, visits, everything else is a priviledge and can be taken away anytime and for no reason too.
That even includes food, it seems: Ginny's been in a prison in Miami for a short time (she was going to testify in another death row inmate's trial) and they only fed her whenever they felt like it. And that wasn't too often; she lost quite some weight in that period. She ended up not testifying and was returned to Lowell. Anything better than that cell covered in shit (they didn't bother to clean up the cell before they put her in there) with only a bed sheet and no clothes. No, I'm not exaggarating, this really happened! And I get the feeling the DOC was bullying her into not testifying by treating her like this, but maybe I'm just being paranoid and cynical.
Ginny's on death row in Florida and she didn't do what she's sentenced to death for (ordering her husband to be killed). Currently she's appealing with the Supreme Court. Florida had to release 20 death row inmates already because they were innocent, the justice system is a total farce there. She was set up by the people who testified against her in her trial, who were the actual ones who did it.
Ginny used to be housed in Broward, which was okay in her own words. She and the 5 other female death row inmates had their own dorm they could walk around in freely during the daytime and they could go outside and sit on a bench in a grassy environment that was quite pleasant. Now she's the last one left (2 were executed and 3 had their death sentence overturned) and the Florida DOC moved her to Lowell in 2002 I think.
She's locked up in her cell 24/7 basically. She only gets to sit outside in a cage (she describes it as some kind of dog bench) one hour per week (international rules stipulate an inmate must spend AT LEAST 7 hours a week outside so that's 1 violation) and 3 times a week she can take a shower at 3.30 AM (another violation of rights I'm sure) because that's the most convenient time for Lowell.
Also, they hold up her mail. Usually it takes at least 1 week until a letter to me leaves the prison and they sometimes also take way too much time to deliver ingoing mail to her (legally it has to be delivered to the inmate within 3 days, as for sure you know, but doesn't always happen).
They do all this because they CAN. She file grievances but nobody will listen because she's just one person and she's all by herself on DR anyway. I find it a disgrace, really. This shouldn't happen to anybody and certainly not in a Western country.
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