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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