Category: Victim to Victor

“I haven’t seen them since I’ve been locked up”

Mirinda Boob

“I don’t know where she is. I do know she is married and as far as I know has 2 children.”

Paula Johnson

“Do not know, do not have communication with them.”

Elizabeth Collazo

After she was incarcerated, Sheená’s children went to live with her mother and two younger sisters. She writes, “My incarceration devastated my family…at ages 30 and 33, [my children] still have enduring effects of my incarceration.” Keiff is currently serving the same sentence as his mom- a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder.

Sheená’ King

• “I didn’t take just one life, I took four. The other three were my children. All that they could have been, all they were meant to be. If only…”
• She wants to start a latchkey program for girls with incarcerated mothers. The program already has a name: Girls Just Like Us. With enough funds – the plan now is to sell homemade cookies – the program could organize educational field trips and collect funds for the children’s futures. So by providing a safe place to go, an adult to look up to, feel accepted and loved, it would tackle something more fundamental: 
• “These kids go through hell. They might get visits or phone calls, but that’s not a hug from a mother. A mother’s presence is her assurance.”
• “It will be a place to feel sheltered from peer pressure, shame, and abandonment issues from having a mom in prison. A place to demolish their shame, build self-esteem and hopefully keep them from becoming one of the statistics: 85% of children with mothers in prisons become incarcerated themselves.”

Jennifer Rhodes

Elizabeth’s incarceration and the realities of her crime caused a severing of her family. She writes, “My incarceration caused a lot of pain, suffering, torment and separation. Anger, questioning, abandonment, addiction.” She says, “I lost all ‘family’ support upon my crime.” She does not have communication with her children, now in their early-mid 20s, who went to live with her victim’s family when she was incarcerated. She never receives in-person visits. As Elizabeth distills it, “Prison is a lonely life filled with suffering.”

Elizabeth Collazo

“It is shameful and there will be little support as any of us age. Surgeries take many years before they are approved and the medical care provider denies basic needs which, if preventive measures were taken, medical costs could be significantly reduced. Medical, like every department in this facility, is reactionary.”

Sheená King

“The disabled and mentally ill have a lot of difficulty in prison. The activities building and gym is not handicap accessible. The kitchen refuses to meet dietary restrictions. Those that are having mental health issues as they are ignored until it’s an emergency. But, my heart goes out to the inmates with dementia or mental illness. One inmate named [name redacted] is 90 years old. She has been here 40 years. She NEVER gets out of her cell. She can’t walk and she has dementia. She often cried out for someone to come and talk to her. Another lifer named [name redacted] had a stroke. She has beginning stage dementia. She rarely gets out of her cell. The officers tell me they don’t have the time to watch her. There are so many others. The real tragedy is these women will get lonely and frustrated and start screaming. The COs will give them a misconduct, the women will be taken to the RHU for 30-90 days and then brought back.”

Maria Spencer

“The staff look at the elderly as a burden. The elderly are treated horrific…One thing about Muncy they deliver the meals to the elderly here never. There was a woman partly paralyzed who went without meals for 30 days… I am scared to be a senior here! I would rather be in heaven than live here as a senior.”

Elizabeth Collazo

• Inside prison, medical care is as lacking as punishment is plentiful. She explains that the COs determine who receives medical care. “If you are sick to the point of death they would rather death than place a call to medical.” If an incarcerated individual is refused care, their only recourse is to wait for someone from the psychology department to see them, which could be a minimum of three days. In that interim, Elizabeth has witnessed individuals self-harm, commit suicide, harm others, or die from lack of medical care.
• Elizabeth has experienced the same battle for mental health care. She was diagnosed with PTSD in her late 40s, but was repeatedly denied mental health treatment when she was at SCI Muncy. It wasn’t until she was transferred to SCI Cambridge Springs that Eilzabeth finally received care. It was in the course of the aforementioned drug test debacle that Elizabeth met a staff psychologist. She says, “she took interest in me and provided me with information and tools I still use 5 years later to maintain stability.”

Elizabeth Collazo

“She also talks about the lack of support for the mentally ill and physically disabled, and how the prison is not the right environment for care. She writes, “Prison is no place to house those with physical and mental issues…In both cases the origin of the problem is not investigated, pills are remedy.” She thinks that if prisons are meant to be rehabilitative, they need more educational and vocational opportunities that do not have barriers based on sentence minimums. She recommends more trauma counselors so all incarcerated people can have access to therapy.

Michelle Hetzel