Tuesday, October 28, 2008

You be the judge: should this guard be fired?

Did you ever see "The Silence of the Lambs"? Did you think it was just not believable that an inmate could hide a sharp object, then use it to viciously stab a guard? Sadly, that scenario is going to play out someday at the Ingham County Jail.

As we've learned, about 1/4 of the guards at the Ingham County Jail are assholes, and they don't give a damn whether your meds are properly dispensed. One of the these is particularly lazy about meds, and her actions put her fellow guards, and herself, in danger.

Now for the Hannibal Lecter story and its parallel to this particular guard. This guard enables exactly the scenario from that movie. A certain inmate has diabetes. This means he needs to prick his finger with a blade to draw some blood, test his blood sugar, and use a hypodermic needle to inject insulin -- twice a day. 

Let's assume this guy is gay, which in this case happens to be true. There is nothing wrong with that, except that in this case he was in jail awaiting sentencing on sex-related crime. Hell, for that matter, we're all jail inmates, which means that any of us may have questionable social behaviors. You don't want to be exposed to any inmate's blood, and you don't want a fellow inmate to have a needle in his hands without supervision.

So, if there's a diabetic in your dorm, every morning most guards will bring a medical kit about the size of a lunch pail, set it down for the inmate, and watch as he pricks his finger, bleeds, and then reads his blood sugar. Then the inmate takes a hypodermic needle and injects his required dose of insulin. The guard may do this outside the dorm -- probably using the meds cart he has with him as a table -- or inside your dorm, on the table where you will soon eat.

Understand that the jail, with good reason, is paranoid about any pieces of metal -- especially sharp metal, or metal that could be sharpened. If your lawyer gives you a manilla envelope with a brass clasp, the guard will nervously rip the clasp away before you take the envelope back to your cell. Any time you return from outside jail -- work duty, a court date, a hospital stay -- you are strip searched to make sure you don't have a weapon, including sharp objects.

But this one guard apparently never saw "Silence of the Lambs." She's lazy. When she comes through to give this dude his insulin, she drops off the needle kit for the inmate, and leaves the dorm so she can service other dorms! She may not return for 30 minutes.

This means our fellow inmate has every opportunity to hide a hypodermic needle. The needle kit includes a secure disposal receptacle for used needles; there's no way for the guard to know later if the inmate really has deposited his used needle properly.

The guys in my dorm talked this over. It was a low-security group, and no one, not even our diabetic dude, seemed disposed to violence against a guard. But ICJ has one amazingly stupid guard who repeatedly gave easy access to a potential weapon -- day after day. I don't know about you, but I think a guard who leaves sharp, possibly lethal objects in the hands of an inmate, and then moves on to other work, should be disciplined or fired. My guess is that once her fellow guards realize this, they'll feel the same way.

More broadly, ICJ needs to think through their procedures for diabetic inmates. Do you really want some random guy bleeding on your breakfast table or over your meds?

No comments:

Post a Comment