Prison life is tough enough without the additional problems of not having basic needs. The Sheridan prison complex in Sheridan, Oregon, is in a crisis, unable to meet not just health care, but other basic needs, like clean laundry and sanitary food prep. A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to questions about conditions and medical care at Sheridan.
Lisa Hay, Oregon’s federal public defender, described the problems inside the Bureau of Prisons run facility as below the standards required by the U.S. Constitution. “What’s most dismaying to me is that we’re hearing the same kinds of complaints for two years and I feel somewhat helpless,” Hay told OPB in an interview Thursday. “People are dying, people are being harmed, people are being harmed psychologically and physically.”
Dr. Michael Puerini, a certified expert in corrections health care, “The system of care at the FCI Sheridan does not allow for adequate access to care,” Puerini stated in his inspection report. “Access to care is a fundamental aspect of the care system. Without access to care, adults in custody are essentially left without healthcare, much to their peril.”
Sheridan has quarantined inmates with COVID-19 in its gymnasium at times during the pandemic. Puerini stated that was “sub-standard care” and violated patient confidentiality. “Some of the patients housed there were seemingly quite ill, having only recently been released from the hospital,” he wrote, following the September inspection. “Using an understaffed gymnasium — no healthcare staff were seen — as an infirmary is simply irresponsible.”
For the last two years, staffing shortages and efforts to control the virus have caused lengthy lockdowns across federal prisons, leaving inmates in their cells for hours or days. Several cancer patients also reported they have not received treatment, despite knowing and worrying about their conditions for months.
“My last blood work that I did in Victorville, California, before I was transferred to Sheridan in October, showed that I have prostate cancer,” one inmate wrote the federal public defender’s office Jan. 11. “The doctor here said, ‘Sorry bud, we don’t have the staff or the resources to treat you because COVID has us tapped. But I MIGHT be able to get you in to see a urologist eventually.’”
In other news, Kate Brown in her final two years in office has become the busiest governor in modern Oregon history – and among the busiest in the country – to use her power to grant mercy to criminal defendants, offering clemency to 1,204 people so far.
