One pill. I lost my son over one pill.
On the first Saturday in January this year, my son arrived at the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania. On Monday – not long after midnight – he was declared dead by Mercy Hospital. If the guards and the Corizon staff (a for-profit correctional healthcare company) at the hospital had been willing to provide him with the medicine that he needed to stay alive, he would not have died.
You see, my son had seizures. The last major seizure he had was so bad that he bit off a piece of his own tongue. It scared him, and he took his medicine religiously, twice a day. He knew when a seizure was coming, and it took a few hours for it to come on. So when he was locked up, the Corizon staff listed the medications he needed to take, and when he needed to take them, on the intake form provided to jail authorities.
Yet, soon after arriving in jail, he called his girlfriend to let her know that he wasn’t receiving it. Knowing my son, he must have asked for the medicine multiple times. He feared having seizures, for good reason. So why didn’t the jail give it to him?
It was in his records at the Allegheny County Jail that he needed his medication mornings and evenings, but according to Corizon’s own records he only received a single dose during his entire time in jail. When he started to seize, the only thing between him and his death was that one pill that everybody in charge of his oversight at ACJ had failed to give him.
Instead, when he started having a seizure, Frank was forcibly restrained, handcuffed, shackled, had his face covered with a “spit mask,” and turned over on his stomach, according to records from Corizon. He became unresponsive and was taken to the hospital where he died.
My son had not even gone to trial, yet he was sentenced to die by the cruelty of a system that does not believe that inmates have a right to adequate health treatment. This is a travesty and a violation of human rights.
To this day, I have not received any official notification from the Allegheny County Jail letting me know that my son died. They did not even have the courtesy to call me and tell me what had happened.
The disrespect shown to me is nothing compared to the level of inhumanity and dehumanization that inmates who have health care crises at the ACJ face. After Corizon took over at ACJ, death rates at the jail rose to twice the national average.
After Frank died, I learned that Corizon was awarded the contract after they promised to cut $1m in health care costs at ACJ. That budget-tightening came at a high cost, including my son’s life. But there have been many reports of inmates at the jail being denied medication, ignored when they put in sick call slips, and suffering serious injuries as a result of this neglect.
Conditions are so bad that even the health care workers at ACJ are speaking out against Corizon and the county. The workers formed a union and reached out to community groups to form the ACJ Health Justice Project. I am a proud member of the ACJ Health Justice Project and will remain an advocate for those incarcerated the rest of my life. Nobody should have to suffer what I have just because some politicians want to save a dollar.
