New America Media, James Ridgeway
, Sept. 26, 2012
SHIRLEY. Mass.--William “Lefty” Gilday was 82 and suffering from dementia and
Parkinson's when officials at Massachusetts' Shirley Prison placed him in an
isolation cell -- a "medical bubble" -- for throwing an empty milk carton at a
guard. He spent the last months of his life alone, separated by a window from
medical staff, who placed manila folders across the glass so they didn’t have to
look at him—and also blocking his view.
As we get older, it is easy
enough to imagine old age as a prison -- the body imprisoned by illness and
loneliness. But in recent months, I have been corresponding with older men in
Massachusetts state prisons who are in for life -- or in this case,
death.
I am 75, so we share a camaraderie of sorts as we compare notes on
our aches and pains and our medication regimens. They know I understand what
it's like to be growing old and facing illness and death. But they also know I
have no idea what it's like to endure life behind bars, to face the difficult
end of life with no chance of ever again breathing the free air.
The men
in prison want to tell me, and they want the outside world to know what their
lives are like. They know full well the retribution that would likely follow for
speaking with the press, but not one of my correspondents asked for
anonymity.
Daily Indignities and Isolation What
is clear from my correspondence is that days are filled with indignities, such
as trying to heave an aging body into the top bunk, fighting off younger
troublemakers, struggling to move fast enough to get a food tray filled or get a
book at the library when you can barely walk.
Most of all, there is isolation. Prisons discourage inmates
from forging friendships, and prison officials are suspicious of anything that
smacks of organizing. So they switch inmates back and forth between prisons and
deny them the right to communicate with anyone else who is
incarcerated.
Yet the group of lifers I've corresponded with have tried
to make something of their lives, serving as jailhouse lawyers, organizing
against abusive conditions, helping other inmates survive.
Sometimes
these pursuits get them in trouble, but their prison records are free of any
violent offenses. Even if technically eligible for parole, as a few of them are,
most have been convicted of crimes that were both horrific and high-profile,
ensuring that they will never get out.
Joe Labriola, 66, is a former
Marine war hero who served two tours in Vietnam, receiving a Purple Heart and
Bronze Star with V for valor. After returning home, Joe was convicted of killing
a drug dealer, who was an FBI informant. He got life without parole. So far he
has served 38 years, 18 of them in solitary confinement.
Agent Orange
exposure left Joe struggling to breathe. He can't walk more than 10 steps
without help from an oxygen tank. He's in a wheelchair most of the time and
lives in a ward called Assisted Daily Living, which he describes as a clutch of
hospital beds in a corridor.
"The only assistance we get,” he tells me,
“is what other prisoners assigned to clean the floor and bathrooms render us
when we ask."
From his window, Joe has a view of the prison hospital. "I
see men coming up for medication and insulin at least three to four times per
day. They come in chairs, geriatric walkers, and all have medications. In one
week we had three deaths."
Seniors in the outside world complain about
health care. But the inpatient facilities at the prison’s hospital consist of a
series of five small wards with five beds in each. Men in various stages of bad
health or terminal illness lie in bed all day with nothing to do but watch soap
operas and the rare housefly that meanders in.
"What they need is mental,
spiritual and human stimulation in the form of one-on-one care provided by
trained prisoners," Joe writes. "There are many men willing to volunteer their
time and energy to make this a reality."
“We Loved the Old
Man”Joe Labriola's "best pal" was Lefty Gilday. A minor league
ballplayer turned ’60s revolutionary, a convicted cop killer, and target of one
of the most famous manhunts in Massachusetts history, Lefty had been in and out
of prison several times on robbery offenses when he fell in with a group of
young Brandeis students, who thought they could spur on a black revolution by
stealing guns and money.
When the Boston police answered an alarm during
a bank robbery with guns drawn, Patrolman Walter Schroeder was shot dead. Lefty
maintained it was a ricochet of a warning shot, but he was tried and convicted
of first-degree murder.
Initially sentenced to death, Lefty became a
lifer when the U.S. Supreme Court briefly banned capital punishment in 1972. The
students got sentences of no more than seven years.
In prison, Lefty
became renowned as a jailhouse lawyer, putting together cases for other inmates.
He settled disputes and became something of an elder statesman. "We loved the
old man," Joe wrote.
When dementia set in, Lefty was already suffering
from advanced Parkinson's disease and a host of other ailments. Inmates at
Shirley Prison formed an ad hoc hospice team in their crowded ward. They brought
special food from the prison commissary, heated it in an ancient microwave, and
fed it to their dying friend. They helped him to the toilet and cleaned him
up.
Joe tried to see that Lefty got a little sunshine every day, wheeling
his chair out into the yard and sitting with his arm around Lefty to keep him
from falling out.
After Lefty was placed in the medical bubble, his
friends were denied contact with him. When Joe snuck in one day he found
unopened food containers stacked up. Lefty said he couldn't open the tabs to get
at the food. The stench of piss and feces was overpowering.
In September
2011, Lefty Gilday died in a Boston hospital. His friends sought permission to
conduct a service in the prison chapel. Their request was denied. A chaplain
helped put together a service in a classroom, which culminated in some 80 men
sailing paper planes into the air in a symbolic representation to Lefty's
spirit.
Younger Prisoners Not Told of
DementiaOther inmates with dementia are not as fortunate in
their cellmates. John Feroli, in for murder, wrote to me about several lifers at
Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgwater, Mass. They are housed in double
cells with much younger prisoners who are never told about the old timers'
ailments.
In one case the guy with dementia believed his cellmate was
stealing his clothes and started a fight. His cellmate broke his jaw. Another
thought his cellmate was pissing in his socks, so he smashed his cellmate's
guitar and hit him over the head with it. He got knocked out in
return.
John also wrote about another guy in his 70s, who was in solitary
confinement because he failed to stand for the afternoon count. "He was on the
third floor of the housing unit, he was partially paralyzed from a stroke and
the batteries in his hearing aid were dead and he never heard the announcement
for 'Count time.'"
At 73, Frank Soffen, convicted of armed robbery and
second-degree murder, has spent more than half his life in prison. He has
suffered four heart attacks, has kidney and liver disease, and can move about
only in a wheel chair.
Because of his failing health and a record that
includes once rescuing a guard threatened by other prisoners, Frank has been
identified as a candidate for release on medical and compassionate grounds. He
has a supportive family and a place to live with his son.
The
Massachusetts Board of Parole voted to deny his release in 2006, and again this
past January. He will not be eligible for review for another five years. Today,
he is warehoused in a medical observation bubble at Norfolk State Prison,
bed-ridden, unable to wash himself, clad in adult diapers, and unable to hold a
pen.
In May, I went to visit Gordon Haas at Norfolk, some 70 miles south
of Boston. Haas has been in prison since his 1975 conviction for murdering his
wife and children. That conviction was overturned and a retrial ended in a hung
jury. He was reconvicted in a third trial in 1982.
Since he has been
behind bars, Haas has earned a master's degree from Boston University. Now at
age 68, he is active in the prison’s lifers' group, which he now leads, and is
pushing compassionate care legislation in the state legislature. Haas has been
urging the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to adopt a hospice program for
the last 15 years.
"Our contention is that since lifers will probably be
in need of such care we [prisoners] are a resource for others now," he tells me.
"But the DOC does not sanction prisoners helping other prisoners. There is one
outlet and that is prisoners can volunteer to take those who can go outside for
programs and fresh air, even those in wheelchairs. That is good, but that is all
there is."
Mass. Ignores Signs of Times
About one in five Massachusetts inmates (19 percent) is 50-plus, more than the national average of one in six (16 percent), according to
“At America’s Expense: The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly,” released in June by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Nationally, says the ACLU report, inmates 50 or older cost --$68,270 to house and maintain—double the average for all prisoners of $34,135. That’s far lower than the Massachusetts overall per-prisoner cost of $45,502.19 in 2011, according to the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC).
For those at the end of life, Massachusetts prisons have no hospice programs to manage the care of terminally ill prisoners. In January, the state released its
“Massachusetts Corrections Master Plan,” which projects the long-term development of three new facilities to deal with medical problems.
Despite housing 2,212 older prisoners, the
Massachusetts DOC said it does not “have a position on compassionate, geriatric or any other type of release. That's up to the Legislature.”
In recent years, according to a 2010 report from the
Vera Institute for Justice, by 2009 at least 15 states and the District of Columbia had programs allowing some form of “geriatric release,” especially for imprisoned elders with terminal or serious illnesses or disabilities.
The Vera report notes, though, that jurisdictions rarely use these provisions because of political considerations, public opinion, narrow eligibility criteria, procedures discouraging inmates from applying for release, and complicated and lengthy referral and review processes.
Massachusetts has no type of medical, or geriatric release program.
--James Ridgeway
