by Ricardo Ferrell, Guest Writer
On an average day, a prisoner is accounted for at least 5 times. Various prison keepers make rounds to ensure that each body is present in or at their proper designated area, i.e., bunk, work detail, skilled trade or visiting room. In the event anyone isn’t in the area they’re suppose to be in, then an emergency siren is sounded which requires all prisoners to return to their cells, rooms or cubicles. After everyone is secured, a head count is conducted, if anyone is missing, an intensive search ensues. The concern of prison officials involved in these type of searches is not so much in reclaiming the physical form that is Out of Place/AWOL but the penal systems bottom line. For example, when these instances take place in the State of Michigan they run the risk of losing roughly $40,000 in taxpayers revenue, which is the amount allotted each year to house, feed, clothe and provide mental and medical health care for each prisoner. These costs are contributing factors to the astronomical $80 billion carceral price tag in the United States.
Anyone can’t help but notice the similarities between the measures taken to monitor and maintain modern day prisoners and those implemented by former slaveholders in America. The same way that the government would be out of some $40,000 for a lost prisoner, on the other hand the same was true whenever a slave master lost a chattel slave who could no longer produce in the fields, keep house, or reproduce more slaves to keep the iniquitously valuable machine of involuntary servitude functioning and profitable. Both of these oppressive, demeaning and degrading simultaneously ran institutions are mechanisms driven and sustained at the expense of its captives’ life, liberty, peace, health, growth, prosperity and freedom. The devaluing of a prisoner’s life or anyone’s life for that matter only feeds the systems appetite for atrocity and avarice. Its obvious that prisoner’s lives don’t matter to those in power and have control because if they did certainly an incarcerated individual life would have more value than what it does in the eyes of those who devalue it. In the wake of the Coronavirus in 2020, and to date inside the MDOC, we’ve seen firsthand the gross negligence and total disregard for prisoners’ lives by how poorly prison officials and its staff allowed the virus to ravage a vulnerable population as over 28,000 of the 32,000 contracted COVID-19 and 157 prisoners dying from this vicious disease. And now that second and third surges are ramping up and blowing through most of the 28 prisons, we inside remain unprotected sitting ducks, especially the elderly, sick and medically frail who run a higher risk of succumbing to this highly contagious disease and dying.
The overall treatment of prisoners within these prisons is sub-par at best, and despicably disgusting to say the least. Our lives aren’t valued by those in authority, they treat us like we’re less than human. About 6 years ago at the Women’s Huron Valley Facility in Pittsfield Township, two staff members were disciplined after it was determined by investigators that they both engaged in an unlawful and dehumanizing practice when they each made a bet that a female prisoner would kill herself. The two female staff wagered one another lunch, with the loser buying the winner the meal of choice. (The prisoner hung herself and died). These are the type of instances that outlines why prisoner’s lives are devalued in a corrupt prison system that only care about the bottom line, the almighty power of money.
Until everyone are seen and treated like they’re equal to their oppressors and those who devalue them, then we will continue to experience a flawed and devaluing system that doesn’t give a damn about those in its care. And, if they’re continuously allowed to go unchecked and not be held accountable for their horrific actions, then some of us will be devalued to death. This is a stark reality facing many of those who are currently looked at as job security for some and a hefty paycheck for others, while never taking into account the value of every human being, regardless of their current address.