Setting:
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF JACKSON COUNTY, ARKANSAS 1ST DIVISION-CIVIL
DEANNA RUST, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS EXECUTIX FOR THE ESTATE OF NIKKI GAYLE RUST, DECEASED
PLANTIFF
VS. CASE NO.: CV-16-39 NURZUHAL FAUST, DEPUTY WARDEN, individually and in her official capacity; CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS D._____… EMPLOYEES OF ADOC
DEFENDANTS
MR. PROVE-IT
—Wait, who was that jumping in the middle of that story about Nikki?!?
Was that supposed to be me? Insecurity Dude? Some new voice not bound by the laws of scripture? It sounded like it was supposed to be me, but come on, not even I am that heartless.
I mean…sure, with the new Yammander-in-Chief looking to toss the Affordable Care Act out the window, I could see a lot of folks feeling pushed to ask questions like these about what kind of health care prisoners have a right to in comparison to yr average citizen, but we have spoken personally to Nikki’s sister and mother.
I would never be capable of being so blunt or hostile.
MR. WHINEY
No matter how carefully we try to organize and isolate ourselves in this investigation…I fear that there was always destined to be some overlap.
We are, after all, all fragments of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett.
It can’t be that shocking that we see ourselves with his efforts at a unified voice, right?
And anyway, weren’t you the one who told us not to go looking too closely at that curtain?
But, yes I think you are correct to point out that the fracturing of the authorial self—experienced in the compiling this investigation—is an ongoing complication of Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett’s identity and not just explicitly a narrative craft tool being exercised exclusively for the benefit, or detriment, of our audience.
(Pauses a beat.)
And speaking of complicated messes, this is pretty much the first time we have even considered the issue of health care in incarceration.
MR. PROVE-IT
True!
Talk about a complicated mess to try to understand!?! I think we could have approached this investigation with an actual team of researchers and assistants instead of mess of split personas and we’ve still struggled to make sense of how healthcare works in prison.
MR. WHINEY
You can say that again Mr. Prove-it.
Being shut down by the Department of Corrections didn’t help much here either.
Medical care in prisons, and especially in the State of Arkansas, has its own pretty dark and terrifying history. Back in the 60s, most medical care was overseen by inmate “doctors” with no formal training in medicine. At the infamous Tucker Prison Farm in ’67, the head “doctor” was federally exposed as running a drug smuggling and distribution ring from the facilities infirmary. Laws establishing rules and regulations for the medical care of prisoners started getting federally regulated in the 70s, although medical care litigation continues to be the most expensive legal challenge to any Department of Corrections.
Today, medical services in Arkansas detention facilities are contracted out to private health service providers, essentially privatizing a public medical care service, and creating a hidden public-private partnership within the issue of incarceration that is very rarely thought about. I am sure that everyone incarcerated in the State of Arkansas values being attended by actual medical service professionals instead of a fellow inmate running a drug smuggling ring out of the infirmary, but “better than a drug dealer” is a pretty low bar to set for health care.
MR. PROVE-IT
Even with those standards, things get tough competing with shrinking state budgets and a public that ain’t very kind to inmates.
The case of Nikki is certainly complicated, although—as a human being—I don’t know how anybody doesn’t feel the heart break of her family. And isn’t everyone left asking the same question: Would she still be alive if her health care hadn’t been as tied to treating her like a prisoner as it was to treating her like a human being?
MR. WHINEY
And is prison alone the only mitigating factor in Nikki’s death? Obviously, if she were not locked up in close proximity to another women suffering from an infectious illness, then it’s unlikely she would have gotten so sick in the first place. So, on one hand, we have to say the two are directly linked in the case of Nikki’s death…but, at the same time, people catch infectious illnesses outside of prisons as well. How do you establish criterion to determine how much accountability for preventing infectious illness rests on the shoulders of the Department of Corrections?
MR. PROVE-IT
Well, shit—ain’t that the issue with carrying out justice generally in a complicated world?
As often as not, it’s gotta come down to the people reviewing the case. Which is why Nikki’s sister has chosen to focus on the question of why the prison administration took so long to notify the family of a medical emergency. Losing a sister or a daughter is never going to feel ok, but proving who’s to blame is a real gamble. Finding out that someone you love has died several hours too late to be there, or do shit about it, that seems like a provable brutality.
MR. WHINEY
Unfortunately, since this is still an active case, and because no one at the Department of Corrections is willing to communicate with us anyway, it is difficult for us to present any perspective other than Nikki’s family, since they were so kind to sit down with Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett and show their grief in person.
Which means that some readers are going to share in the skepticism of that “Not-Mr. Prove-it voice” and argue that we are presenting the case of Nikki in a leading and biased fashion. But as those limitations are imposed by factors outside of our control, I don’t really—excuse the language—give a shit, do you?
MR. PROVE-IT
Ha ha, no I don’t.
Besides, Nikki Rust was a real person…
(Pauses a beat.)
…As of this moment, I can look up her Facebook page and see a picture of her smiling and standing together with her children. I can scour the Internet and find the video of her sister being interviewed by Little Rock TV news reporters…
…If real experts, or a mass of angry protestors, want to either challenge our findings or use them to back up Nikki’s family and push for more justice in our justice system—well, that would just tickle us fucking pink!
MR. WHINEY
As pink as a pansy!…assuming that pansies can be pink.
To readers who might ask why we, or Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett, have provided so little physical description of Nikki Rust, or of the racial or sociological background in our study of her case, I think it behooves us to confess to the deliberateness of that decision.
(MR. PROVE-IT chuckles at MR. WHINEY’s use of “behooves” but otherwise remains silent as MR. WHINEY continues.)
It is difficult to dive into physical details to someone who died related to illness and not have those details spill over into presumed judgments about how those details may have contributed to her death. We value questions about social identity and incarceration—obviously—from the length of time that we spent analyzing these things in ourselves, but letting you, our audience, think about how aspects of identity, like race and social class, might have played into her medical treatment, is a more worthwhile outcome than projecting our own assumptions of these factors on the case for you.
MR. PROVE-IT
Besides, we’ve already told you that Nikki’s case is entirely researchable for yrself online.
I’m pretty confident that we’ve already owned up to having the evil plot of pulling you, audience member, into this collective investigation, and if we haven’t…well then, shiiit. I guess that cat is out’a the bag…
(MR. PROVE-IT and MR. WHINEY both pause for a beat.)
MR. WHINEY
Well…death is not the only medical concern that women might face during their time incarcerated.
MR. PROVE-IT
No, it ain’t—
MR. WHINEY
One of the most terrifying and barbaric carceral practices women have faced in the State of Arkansas, or maybe anywhere on earth has to be shackling during childbirth.
MR. PROVE-IT
—A practice so awful that it deserves its own entire investigation—
MR. WHINEY
Agreed…and one that incorporates far more professional resources than we, or Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett, are going to be capable of mustering on our, or his, own. However, it is such an important topic that we have to recommend our readers read up on their own, if they have the emotional space and time for it, the painful case of Shawanna Nelson. A woman incarcerated at McPherson’s Unit in 2003 for credit card fraud, who—despite protests by nurses and doctors—had to give birth with her wrists and feet shackled to her hospital bed.
(BOTH MR. WHINEY and MR. PROVE-IT pause for a beat.)
MR. PROVE-IT
I had never thought about it, but did you know that five percent of women are pregnant when they get locked up?
Maybe that don’t seem like a lot…but over time…over the history of incarceration in Arkansas… well, I don’t think she is the only woman who’s had to give birth in chains.
MR. WHINEY
No, I don’t think she was.
And when you factor in hundreds of years of slavery, and how African American women were valued according to their potential fertility…the legacy of shackled childbirth has even darker and more racist implications.
MR. PROVE-IT
As men, pregnancy behind bars is not a reality that we will ever face. No matter how radically we stick to our politics in these reactionary times and must contemplate the potential of ending up behind bars, doing so pregnant is never really going to be on our radar. And yet, even as a complete outsider, it is scary shit.
Where is a pregnant woman going in the middle of labor?
How is she getting there with a guard at the door, shackled or not?
Is a woman convicted of writing bad checks any more of a danger to doctors, nurses or herself than any other woman giving birth?
How have we built this monster—“prisoner”—so fucking convincingly that it overrides an identity like pregnant woman?
MR. WHINEY
I don’t know how to answer those questions…
…But there is a touch less terrible news surrounding this issue today, thanks to the courage of Shawanna Nelson. She sued the State of Arkansas for her treatment while pregnant and incarcerated.
In positive news, that 2009 case Nelson v. Correctional Medical Services, brought enough attention to the practice of shackling women during childbirth that a Federal court ruled decisively against the practice. The court ruled that “shackling a woman prisoner during labor and delivery, in the absence of a clear security justification for such restraints, violates the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
In less positive news, at least for Shawanna, the ruling also determined that Nelson could not clearly demonstrate that Officer Turensky had knowingly violated established constitutional rights, since this issue had not previously come before a Federal court.
Since this case, twenty-four states have passed specific measures restricting the use of restraints on pregnant incarcerated women, and in 2008 President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act into Law, requiring that any use of restraints on pregnant women be documented with justification and there have been no further cases of incarcerated women being shackled during childbirth to come before Federal courts.
MR. PROVE-IT
So, it is possible that Shawanna Nelson’s case might be the last time we hear about a woman giving birth in shackles?
MR. WHINEY
We can only hope.
Although the rate of women’s incarceration continues to climb nationwide, even though overall incarceration rates are decreasing. So, it is unfortunately possible that this issue is not completely resolved legally.
MR. PROVE-IT
Well, I ain’t here for fancy theorizing, but the issues of prison and motherhood challenge the very core of correctional incarceration doesn’t it?
I mean, if the idea for prisons in the first place was to physically tear a person away from their socializing community, isn’t motherhood like…the exact opposite?
MR. WHINEY
That is an interesting and challenging point for departments of corrections to face, Mr. Prove-it, although it risks reductively generalizing the experience of motherhood unfairly. But, even if that is the case, the relationship between socialization and motherhood is worth considering on a sociological scale.
How responsible for enforcing the social expectations for motherhood is our legal system supposed to be?
According the United States Department of Justice and their Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of the women incarcerated in America are mothers of children under the age of eighteen.
8.5% of these mothers experienced homelessness in the year prior to arrest, more than twice that of incarcerated fathers in the same situation. The sexual violence and mental health statistics are even more alarming.
59.7% of incarcerated mothers who reported living with a child under the age of 18 prior to arrest reported experiencing sexual abuse.
63% reported substance dependence or abuse.
72.8% reported living with mental health issues.
29% of incarcerated mothers, who had not been living with their children within the last 3 years, reported being homeless within the year of their arrest.
It is pretty hard not to see deep links between the gendering of crime and access to social support networks.
MR. PROVE-IT
I ain’t going to disagree with your statistics or the scope of the issue, but this is a connection—motherhood, support, and crime—that can be demonstrated less abstractly in one of the highest profile cases that McPherson’s Unit ever saw, the case of Christina Riggs: