Feeling the pain of the cuts behind bars

THE COLD metallic "Clink!" signals another night in a prison cell. It's almost 6 p.m., and although I've just returned from dinner here at Green Bay's maximum-security correctional institution, I'm still hungry.

Budget cutbacks, they tell us. Something to do with Gov. Scott Walker's pulling funding from Wisconsin's Department of Corrections (DOC). That term--budget cutbacks--seems to be the prison staff's excuse for every injustice perpetrated against the inmates these days.

I recently paid a visit to the prison doctor because one of my knees had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. "Well, if you don't like it, you shouldn't have come to prison," the doctor told me as he adjusted his glasses on his bulbous red nose.

I didn't see the point in reminding the gentleman that I'm not exactly here on my own free will. "Sir, I'm just saying that I need some medical attention," I said. "Look at this thing. It hurts like hell."

"Well, I can give you some ibuprofen for it, but that's all you're gonna get," the doctor replied.

"What about a knee brace or something?" I asked.

"If you want a support brace, you'll have to buy one out of the catalog. I'm not supposed to hand stuff like that out anymore."

He then handed me a DOC memo from the governor's office that he'd gotten laminated for occasions just like this. In short, it said that due to budget cutbacks, medical care for prisoners was to be limited.

Limit medical care for prisoners--for human beings? What if this was a life-threatening issue or could result in permanent disability? I was under the impression that prisoners were wards of the state, that our care was their responsibility, yet here I am paying a $7.50 co-pay to a doctor who simply gives me some pills to take, and tells me to handle the problem myself.

The same doctor just last month, when I wasn't feeling well, informed me that I had a vitamin deficiency, took my $7.50 co-pay, made a comment about budget cutbacks and gave me some Vitamin C. Which, by the way, failed to solve the deficiency. Perhaps if they fed us more nutritious meals, I wouldn't have a vitamin deficiency and feel faint and lethargic most of the time.

LUCKILY, I have a very supportive family, one that will send me money to buy items such as knee braces and vitamins. But what if I didn't have that support, like so many of the inmates here? What would the doctor have told me then--to get a job? To work for 15 cents an hour on my bum knee, coupled with a vitamin deficiency, until I was able to save up the $13 it costs for the knee brace and the $4.64 it costs for the vitamins?

These are questions and worries that I guarantee a great many prisoners go through every day. How will they pay for items like soap and toothpaste when they're struggling to save up money to pay for medical care? Apparently, the governor and the DOC fail to comprehend the term "ward of the state."

These issues seem to be even more relevant in a state like Wisconsin, where the prisoners don't have the opportunity to earn parole. In this state, if convicted of a crime, you do every single day of your sentence.

Under Wisconsin's truth-in-sentencing legislation that took effect in 1999, the DOC could no longer parole inmates who had served the majority of their sentence or those who realized that they had made a mistake and worked hard for redemption. Inmates don't have any reason or incentive to rehabilitate themselves or participate in one of the few programs provided by the state.

The 2009 budget, however, contained a provision known as Act 28 that, in short, gave inmates with non-sexual or murder-related charges the opportunity to earn early release.

Interesting that over the two-year period during which Act 28 was in effect, only 499 of the nearly 30,000 inmates incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons were released through the program. In early 2011, Act 28 was abolished by Governor Walker for reasons unclear--thought it seems likely that his desire to gain public support was involved. After all, what politician wants to appear "soft" on crime?