A Chance to Succeed & The Dignified Prisoner

A Chance to Succeed

By Donna Milisci

Each year in Massachusetts, hundreds of drug offenders receive fixed and lengthy sentences. Courts are barred from considering other factors such as prior records, what role the defendant played or if the defendant is a drug addict. As the law stands today if a person gets charged with distribution or trafficking there is a mandatory minimum sentence required, and an addict can, at any time, have enough drugs on hand to be charged with one or the other.

In my case, I was charged with trafficking cocaine over 14 grams, which requires a 3 years

minimum mandatory. I am at the end of my sentence, but during my three years I was not eligible for parole. I could not earn “Good Time”, and I could not participate in the work release program. However, now I sit at South Middlesex, which is a pre-release facility. It has cost the Common-wealth of Massachusetts $141,00 to house me for three years when all the while I could have been paying rent here, had I been able to work in the community. What were these Legislators thinking?

Drug use is a horrible plague on society and no one would deny that the drug trade has a devastating effect on our communities. However, handing out harsh sentences to low-level offenders does not necessarily solve the problem of drugs. Substance abuse continues to spread and many offenders who do their time and are released quickly return to prison. Why? Because there is no post-release supervision, we are not allowed to participate in the work release program, and there is no incentive to do any self help programs. So until this situation is looked at and courts are able to start treating the disease of addiction, as well as the crime, then we are going to continue having problems. Locking up a person with a drug addiction without seriously treating the problem is simply a waste of the Commonwealth’s taxpayer dollars.

I’m not suggesting that drug addicts should not serve their time for their crime. I am suggesting that the Commonwealth would get better results if these people served their time in an intense rehab facility. Otherwise if the symptoms are not treated and all the underlying reasons why addicts use drugs not addressed, then the prisons are just going to be a revolving door costing our Commonwealth millions.

Once upon a time sanity ruled our Country, drug laws were more concerned about rehabilitation, but for a variety of reasons about 30 years ago the Common-wealth of Massachusetts enacted the first of their mandatory minimum laws. I’m not really sure where to pin blame but this law is simply not working.

In this time of recession the Commonwealth could hugely benefit and save millions of dollars. The cost per year is $47,000 to house an inmate, as opposed to the cost of $4-5,000 to rehabilitate. I believe our taxpayers dollars should be put to better use than to just house prisoners for mandatory sentences. It should be spent on better education, better rehabs, and mental health centers. At least give us addicts a better chance to succeed.

Donna Milisci was released  from the MCI-Framingham on August 13, 2010.

The Dignified Prisoner

By Susan King

1984: the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 4-5 decision, led by Chief Justice Warren Burger, ruled that no prisoner in the United States has “any right to any personal dignity.” The Fourth Amendment does not protect prisoners at all, ever, “no matter how extreme the circumstances.”

I was in and out of Framingham from 1974-1985, a little over a ten-year stint. My sentences were hard and unbreakable. I was charged with prostitution to armed robbery and kidnapping (for taking my own son from a foster parent). The father and I were on the run for about a month with the baby before we were caught. Later, I found out that our beautiful son was in and out of foster homes until he was adopted at three by a bourgeois black family from New York, my birthplace. Oh, the twisted irony, my pain was huge. I warred with myself, attacking on my personal battlefield with drugs and attempted suicides. I felt unworthy and undignified.

The Civil Rights of Institutional Persons Act (CRIPA), 42 USC § 1997a et seq., authorizes actions for redress in cases involving the deprivation of rights secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, including, but not limited to mental institutions, nursing homes, jails, prisons, and juvenile facilities. The basic principle is that the US Attorney General may institute a civil action in a US District Court against a party they have reasonable cause to believe is violating the act to ensure corrective measures are taken. Inmates on the other hand must first “exhaust the internal prison grievances processes” prior to personally filing suit, following specified minimum standards.

Webster’s defines indignity as a lack or loss of dignity, or honor, something that offends against one’s personal dignity or respect, something humiliating or injurious to one’s self-esteem. Webster’s continues that the Civil Rights Acts supports and protects our dignity as it is upheld in our Constitution. I can’t help but see conflict, and I ask myself does dignity come from rights?

I guess we are guaranteed a loss of dignity when we walk into prison. During the admissions process I felt stripped, not only of my clothes but also my dignity. “Walk through the detector. Sit in the Chair. Bend forward, grab your cheeks, and cough. Get up. Roll your jaws around on the desktop…” Fifty-one years old, and I was mortified. Further, male correctional officers supervise the female showers, so vulnerable, the other women and I stand nude in transition from showering to dressing. I have written before of intellectual property, mail, and prisoners’ rights. Important mail from my family and lawyer are thrown into a plastic bag like trash. Our privacy is compromised, boundaries broken. Stop messing with my dignity!

There are ways to recapture dignity and success within these razor blade walls. I cannot describe the joy I felt when my self-esteem rocketed as a result of my achieving my G.E.D. Dignity was linked to self-esteem, it was a major revelation. My class was the first to graduate from the G.E.D. program here in Framingham. Training ourselves with different skills heightened our sense of personal dignity and we found we no longer look to others to validate ourselves.

Early tastes of success propelled me onward and I completed one educational program after another: typing, computers, short hand, etc. Regardless of the law or rules of the Constitution, I can excel, I can matter. Oh, and I got my baby back! So I now understand that dignity is a state of being, whereas rights are concrete features of the law.

Susan King is an inmate at MCI-Framingham.