Reading a blog about all those people who have died inside Arizona prisons since January 2009 made me think of a graveyard or cemetery located at the old Florence Central prison where the bodies were buried and often forgotten of those prisoners that passed away unclaimed and abandoned by families and relatives either not wanting to claim the body or unable to afford a decent funeral for their kin thus leaving it up to the state to make arrangements for their funeral. The blog, written by a prison abolitionist (Peggy Plews) with whom I sometimes disagree with but still respect her points of view, show a high deadly rate of occurrences that warrants looking at by someone independent of the prison staff. Her statistics are shocking as it indicates a record of dismal management practices of preserving human lives inside these prisons. This report shows the following suicides reported and the person’s data:
Jan – June 2009 (5 suicides in 6mos):
Angela Soto (MexAmer, 28) Harvey Rymer (W, 33)
Angel Torres (MexAmer, 32) Dung Ung (AsnAmer, 32)
Caesar Bojorquez (MexNatl, 37)
July – June 2010 (9 suicides in 12 months):
Erick Cervantes (MexAmer, 30) Douglas Nunn (W, 33)
Hernan Cuevas (MexAmer, 18) Monte McCarty (W, 46)
Patricia Velez (MexAmer, 24), Jerry Kulp (AfAmer, 17)
Jessie Cota, (MexAm, 28) James Adams (W, 46)
Eric Bybee (W, 32)
July – June 2011 (14 suicides in 12 months):
Tony Lester (NA, 26) Robert Medina (MexAm, 29)
Geshell Fernandez (NA, 28) Patrick Lee Ross, (AfAmer, 28)
Lasasha Cherry (AfAmer, 23) Rosario Bojorquez-Rodriguez (MexNat, 29)
Duron Cunningham (AfAmer, 40) James Galloway (W, 54)
Ronald Richie (W, 42) Susan Lopez (MexAmer, 35)
Michael Tovar, (MexAmer, 20) Carey Wheatley (AfAmer, 49)
Michael Pellicer (AfAmer, 35) Luis Moscoso-Hernandez (MexNat, 28)
Looking up the term graveyard for realizing that many of these prisoners are dying either during the middle of the night or just before dawn as the first shift comes in to relief the night shift, it come to mind that there was a deep purpose for calling it such a shift. Using the explanation by wiki-answers I found: “In the 1800’s, medical science wasn’t what it is today, and people who were merely in a deep coma were often pronounced dead. When their coffins were dug up ( who knows why….flooding perhaps, or by vandals) they would occasionally find scratch/claw marks on the inside of the coffin lid, indicating that the person had regained consciousness and tried to fight their way out. The practice then became to attach a bell on a long cord to the hand of the supposedly deceased. During the day, the cemetery attendants would listen for bells ringing, but the shift of workers whose sole job was to listen for the bells of the buried but undead, from midnight to dawn, became known as the Graveyard Shift.”
Counting the number of suicide deaths during that time frame, it would most likely benefit the Arizona Department of Corrections to attach a bell to every cell in solitary confinement for the sole purpose of letting the graveyard shift workers know they are still alive rather than ignoring them until they die of “natural causes.” Although somewhat hard on the culture, the point is that perhaps the due diligence and the deliberate indifference to the value of human lives inside Arizona prisons have been marginalized to a point in reality where it wouldn’t even warrant attaching a bell to save a life.
Source:
http://arizonaprisonwatch.blogspot.com/2011/09/suicide-watch-too-many-az-prisoners.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_orgin_of_the_phrase_graveyard_shift#ixzz1Xelxdkpu