Infects the Prison Hospital
At Laurel Highlands
By: George Feigley
Cofounder
On the surface it may appear that the hospital at the Laurel
Highlands prison in Southwestern Pennsylvania is humane. It may
even seem to be a place of Pennsylvania's compassion for old,
sick and dying prisoners. As the following incident reveals,
the Laurel Highlands' hospital is barbaric at best. In most
respects it's every bit as inhumane as Pennsylvania's many other
prisons.
A black prisoner in his 80s had been serving his life sentence for over 20 years. For the sake of his dignity, I won't use his name. Thanks to prison food, various abuses and other factors, he developed serious abdominal cancer. As he aged, the cancer became terminal. It went untreated. In despair, the prisoner grew erratic and depressed. In Pennsylvania a "life" sentence is really death by old age. It's a grim process for a prisoner to endure. Feeling that he wasn't suffering enough, the "humane" authorities at Laurel Highlands tossed the dying cancer patient into the hole. Out of an excess of consideration, I refrain from publishing the name of the so-called Hearing Examiner who saw "justice" in further punishing a dying man. For a minor infraction of the one of the thousands of often absurd prison rules the old man was locked in the hole. The obvious aim was to torture him during his final days of life. He lost the few privileges which helped him to endure the pain and depression of his cancer. That's the humane character of Laurel Highlands prison. To make the old man as miserable as possible, he was stripped of his personal property, even his clothing. He had no TV and not a crumb of the food he'd bought from the prison commissary. The chair was even removed from his cell so that he couldn't sit down. That will teach him to break a rule. The torture paid off. The prisoner's condition greatly worsened. To the delight of Laurel Highlands' authorities, the old man was not just dying an agonizing death from cancer, he was giving them the sadistic pleasure of torturing him. The 80 something cancer patient began bleeding from his bowels. He lost a huge amount of blood. He became so weak that he could hardly move. He was suffering just as the barbaric staff hoped. The life was draining out of the prisoner. What a joy for the guards to watch. Prisoner janitors were called in to clean up the flood of blood. The prison staff doesn't stoop to cleaning chores. That's way too scary and mundane. Since the old prisoner was in the hole, guards had to watch him while the mess was cleaned up. A troop arrive giggling and joking. They stood around for an hour while the old man bled. Keep in mind that the prisoner was in his eighties and that he was collapsing from loss of blood. Even under those circumstances, the guards were afraid. The were very afraid. To guard the patient they called in a whole squad of guards. At one point there were 8 of them, young, strong and terrified. After a bit a female guard lieutenant rushed in. No, she wasn't interested in the dying man. She went around peeking into other men's cells. She wanted to see if they were neat enough. The terrified platoon of guards were only concerned that (as the sergeant put it) the prisoner "didn't act up." Naked, 80 and bleeding to death, the prisoner was still too scary for the brave Laurel Highlands' guards. The platoon watched as the janitor cleaned up as much of the bloody mess as he could get up. They watched as 3 nurses in haz-mat garb busied themselves with the patient. It was obvious that the man was dying. An ambulance was called. The prisoner was taken off to die at the hospital. To follow-up on that piece of murderous "justice," the humane hearing examiner, "Dupont," had another patient tossed into the hole. The new victim was an 86 year-old man bound to a wheelchair. He was punished for the high crime of smoking. The prison official who allows tobacco and lighters into the hospital was not punished. To make sure the smoker would suffer enough, his wheelchair was taken away. At the Laurel Highlands prison that's considered humane.
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