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Monday, August 26, 2013

California Prison Doctors Win Very Limited Right to Disregard Prisoner Directives



A hunger strike going on more than 45 days among California gang leaders who have been kept in solitary confinement took an odd turn last week.  (Full coverage, LA Times)  The California Bureau of Prisons, which is under receivership (taken over by outside authorities) won a very limited four-paragraph order from a federal judge. The order allows prison doctors to disregard previously signed Do-Not-Resuscitate directives from the patients.  It has been styled a “force-feed” order, while it really will allow doctors to give unconscious inmate/patients an IV of vital nutrients.  Why would they do this?

The prison doctors are allowed to disregard the DNR only where they feel that the prisoner signed it under duress.  That is, where the prisoner was forced by higher-ups in the gang to join the hunger strike but didn’t really want to.  How will this work in practice? 

It is likely that prison officials know who is in charge of what gangs. They also likely have some idea of who is all-in and who isn’t.  When one who isn’t all-in anymore goes unconscious, he can be revived by the doctor, who can then have a private heart-to-heart with the inmate to see if he really does want to maintain the strike.

I spent some time working in a jail in Arkansas, mostly on the juvenile side.  There were times when fights would break out between different gangs and we’d go to break them up.  The moment we got there, the gang members who weren’t into the fight would just hit the floor, done. They’d fought as long as they had to, but not a second longer.  Likely, that’s what the California prison officials think is going on here.  They think that some guys, whether for their own safety or that of their families on the outside, are going along with the strike though they really want nothing to do with it, or the gangs anymore.  If that’s the case, what the prison officials are doing is admirable.

It’ll be more admirable if when the prisoner wakes up, if they find he is serious, he does want to strike until the end and is willing to die, they respect his wishes and let him go and don’t keep repeating the process.  It will then be a far cry from forcing feeding tubes down the throats of Guantanamo inmates to keep them alive for more questioning.   

Thanks to loyal reader Julia Poole for the story idea.  Please send yours to josephmschreiber@gmail.com.

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