Deaths of Despair
Today, while I was on the gate, I watched Cheba’s dead body being carted past the cell I lock in.[i] He was distinguished only by a look on his face as if he were breaking the seal on a tough bowel movement. If it hadn’t been for the Sergeant yelling “what’s the time,” I wouldn’t have even known he was gone. His copper-tone skin glowed as she recorded his time of death. Today is only the 12th day of February, and Cheba’s the 13th prisoner to die this year. That’s no cap. [ii]
The sad legacy of the United States with respect to its poor and incarcerated is its lack of care for those of them suffering from mental health illnesses. [iii]
New Year’s Day on this tier [iv] was dark. As I watched Cheba’s body disappear down the company I wondered if on that night, only 43 days prior, he had contemplated that it might be his last. That night prisoners were barely able to stand, drowning in fermented cheer under the blown-out tier lights. Suppressed sentiments were set free by stagnant cranberry-juice courage as fists flew past their anticipated targets, hitting walls, bars and the bodies of the innocent. Retaliation would ensue in the slobbering reality of dawn.
We can talk, and have had talks—discussions, seminar—and have even published books on the disturbingly high number of prisoners with mental health issues, but seldom do we dissect and address the ways that prison itself perpetuates this dis-ease. “Between 1950 and 2000 the number of people with serious mental illnesses living in psychiatric institutions dropped from almost half a million people to about fifty thousand.” [v]
This decline directly contributed to the dramatic increase in the criminalization and incarceration of the mentally infirm. “The growth in the size of the penal population has been extraordinary: in 2012, the total of 2.23 million people held in U.S. prisons and jails was nearly seven times the number in 1972” [vi]. This unprecedented increase occurred after decades of stable rates of incarceration. [vii]
I don’t remember seeing Cheba partaking in the festivities in the winding hours of his last year with us. What I do remember is the last time I actually looked at him, watching his hair falling down to the small of his back. It was the first time I had seen it outside its ponytail. It was more salt than pepper. He appeared to me as an Aztec Warrior would have a thousand years ago. I was watching him only because he’d let me get on his phone and I didn’t want to eat up all his time. [viii]
The sun was high that day over the dirt yard—bright and looming directly above him and me. When I gestured to him that I was ending my hurried conversation, he gave me a disinterested wave as if to say, “you can keep talking”. He no longer wanted it; he opted instead to bask under that bright, looming sun, shirtless as the day he died.
The belief that prisoners self-medicate to ease the pangs of mental distress is not a concept unique to the incarcerated. In the 1960s, it was the United States government, through the FDA, that approved the drug Thorazine to control mental abnormalities in prisoners, with the theory that it would render inpatient treatment unnecessary. [ix] Ironically, when prisoners self-medicate for the same reasons, they are severely punished though the facilities’ disciplinary departments. As late as 2020, prisoners in New York State Correctional facilities could get up to a year in the box for a dirty urine. [x]
On Cheba’s last day alive, the Officers dragged him out of the cell and performed CPR for about six-minutes before the Sergeant yelled, “time!” They never gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, only chest compressions, nor did they use a defibrillator to jolt his heart back into action. Cheba died on February 12, 2024 at 4:09PM, according to this non-medical-professional Correctional Sergeant.[xi] I am CPR and EMT certified—at least I was 15 years ago and, although that time has long expired, I could swear that we were required to defibrillate an unconscious patient before declaring a time of death.
As Cheba’s chest rose and fell with each pump, he looked to me like one of those rubber Native American toys I had as a boy. They were always shirtless, like those paintings in my history books where the settlers were fully clothed and the Natives were mostly naked, sprawled at their feet, pointing off to some distant territory waiting to be conquered.
In the months prior to Cheba’s death, we too experienced box time in Green Haven based on the new recreation schedule imposed: twenty-three hours in the cell and one hour in the yard. The facility responded to my grievance with a denial, stating that, since I am able to walk to the mess hall and use the kiosk, that constitutes ‘out of cell time.’ Interesting.
I appealed their determination because, though I do not use drugs, I have experienced the negative mental health symptoms attributable to lack of access to communication with my loved ones. What was happening to Cheba’s mental state in the weeks before his demise was happening to us all. The weight of clinical depression from the lack of access to our loved ones is seemingly lifted away through the use of illicit drugs and other anti-social behaviors.
The increased rates of incarceration have resulted in the overcrowding of prisons across the continental United States. This increase was caused primarily by harsher sentencing and policies that over-criminalized minor conduct. For example, in New York State, Rudolf Giuliani’s “quality of life laws” criminalized conduct like standing on a corner or taking up too many seats on the subway train. [xii] This led to an over-reliance on arrest and incarceration of mostly Black and Brown folk.
It goes something like this: A person standing on the corner is approached by New York City Police Officers. The Officers are permitted to search him for their own safety, before issuing him a ticket for loitering. They find marijuana on him and he is arrested. They run his information and discover that he is on probation for a third-degree weapons possessions charge he incurred when he pled guilty to carrying a knife longer than five inches.[xiii] Не was sentenced to five years of probation for that charge with no prison time; but, he was now “on the books”.
Based on this new loitering and marijuana possession charge, he is now in violation of the conditions of his previously imposed probation and is sentenced to five years in prison. On “the inside,” he is exposed to increased violence and hence, becomes increasingly violent himself. He self-medicates, needing more and more drugs to ease the pain he endures from missing his daughter’s eighth birthday, and ninth birthday, and tenth birthday, etc. The drugs he uses become stronger and more addictive. He gets busted by Correctional staff for a dirty urine and is sent to the Upstate Correctional Facility box, which is about 11 hours away from the city.
Hotels are expensive—visits are only conducted on the weekends where chained-up prisoners could sit and see their families behind a glass. He will not be receiving any visits.
He is released from prison five years later, estranged from his family. He starts anew. His mother lives in the Projects and wants him to move in with her but he cannot apply for, or live in any Public Housing units due to his felony convictions. He crashes on the couch of a woman his Bunkie hooked him up with in the Box.
His teenaged daughter wants nothing to do with him—her mother told her that her father was a bum and a jailbird. Not only does she believe her mother, but so does he. He too believes he is a bum and a jailbird but not for long. There is a score he heard about—a big one, and it’s easy, or so the girl he lives with assured him. She needs the help and he wants to help her pay the rent. With the money from this job, he plans to finance his daughter’s prom. He will buy her the most beautiful dress and rent her the most expensive limousine; she will be the belle of the ball. He is now serving a forty-three year prison sentence; we lock on the same tier at Green Haven and both watched Cheba die. Sometime along his journey during that initial five-year stretch—full of violence, box time, and isolation—his ability for rational cognitive deduction became skewed. Up became down and good became bad.
Even if a person comes to prison without a serious mental illness, he is bound to acquire one here. In 2018, researchers at the University of Georgia analyzed the relationship between prison conditions and mental health in 214 state prisons. They concluded that stressors like proximity to loved ones, exposure to violence and poor nutritional diets led to increased symptoms of clinical depression. By increasing the rates of incarceration of people with mental illness, “We have re-created much of the same dysfunction that pervaded the asylums of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the very abuses we sought to end by shutting them down.” [xiv]
Professor Craig Haney, who is considered an expert on the physiological effects of imprisonment and prison isolation stated, “[A]t the very least, prison is painful, and incarcerated persons often suffer long term consequences from having been subjected to pain, deprivation, and extremely atypical patterns and norms of living and interacting with others.” [xv] Dr. Seymour L. Halleck further stated, “[T]he prison environment is almost diabolically conceived to force the offender to experience the pangs of what many psychiatrists would describe as mental illness.” [xvi]
Cheba’s fate was sealed by a CO who compressed his chest without applying mouth-to-mouth, and a Sergeant who pronounced a time of death without a medical degree. She too looked like a Pilgrim—fully clothed in a hat and sweater, standing above this half-naked Native sprawled at her feet—except she was Black, and a female. Cheba’s death was predictable and ensured by the lack of recreation time, educational programs, and access to the Sun his Aztec soul so desperately required.
He sat across from me in one of my rare excursions to the mess hall for lunch, and before he ate, he made a sign of the Christian cross, kissed it, and, looking up to the ceiling said, “God please get me out of here.” He said it silently enough for me to hear. His sincerity moved me to do something, say something—but I didn’t know what? I could have said something corny like, “Keep hope alive bro,” or “God bless you my man,” but instead, I offered him some of my garlic powder in solidarity. He accepted it and sprinkled some over what this prison calls “pizza,” which happens to be my favorite mess hall cuisine.
The night Cheba died, the Green Haven Mental Health Specialist walked the company with a couple of suited people. The tier was dark and tensions were high. Many of us hadn’t seen a dead body outside of a casket in decades, which is a sobering reality in and of itself. Nerves were frazzled from watching the body of a dude we knew, whom we ate with and laughed with only moments earlier, being hauled lifelessly down the gallery.
Some of us disguised our angst with jokes while others with random sighs of, “Damn Cheba.” I was mostly quiet until I saw those damn Pilgrims on the gallery. I stood on the gate and just by chance, one of the Pilgrims stood in front of the cell I was in. He was a well-dressed man in a grey suit and red tie with impeccably-polished brown shoes. “Nice shoes,” I said to him, just to garner his attention. When he thanked me I used it as my opportunity to engage him in some real questioning. I asked him, “Who are you?” I wanted to flip out on him, but I didn’t have a reason to—he technically didn’t kill Cheba; most would say Cheba killed himself. I somehow believed that some way, my incarceration and Cheba’s death purchased those shoes for him.
He informed me that he was with the State Police and had nothing to do with the prison. He was adamant about the fact that he had nothing to do with the DOCS and emphasized that through tone and hand gestures. While I was talking with this detective, another prisoner asked a female Pilgrim with him, “Who are you?” I had seen this woman many times walking through the prison hallways; she was always mindful to stay as far away from the prisoners as possible and never making any eye contact. This Prisoner was outside the cell and walking down the tier on his way to use the kiosk. She replied to him curtly with, “I’m the Mental Health Specialist”. Her dismissive posture failed to accomplish its perceived purpose—which of course, was to conclude the inquiry.
I didn’t immediately pick that up though; my focus was on the new Pilgrim with the shoes we afforded him. However, the moment I heard her state her title I thought this whole scene commensurate with mental health practices in the free world. In my mind, she was here to ensure that we prisoners were not at any emergency levels of distress; like when a school student dies or an employee at a job is suddenly killed, their respective administrations offer their peer groups and colleagues increased access to mental health services. This is how facilities maintain functionality. A school cannot function without a mentally stable student body, nor can a company operate without a mentally sound work force. Even so, a Correctional facility requires a mentally sound prison population, without which chaos would surely ensue.
She was there, I imagined, to make sure we were okay—to take our names and schedule consultations if need be. However, who would be brave enough to expose their pain to her in front of all our gaping eyes on the gate? If anybody, I thought, it would be this guy! His name was Nightmare. The guy who asked her who she was, the guy who was out of his cell and on his way to the kiosk. I mention him by his name in the past tense because he is now in the Upstate Correctional Facility box. He was brave. He was a strong Black brother who wasn’t shy about himself. His name was Nightmare, but he was no nightmare to me. Although he had tattoos all over his face and muscles so bulky a winter coat couldn’t conceal them, his personality was that of a daydream, until that moment. When Nightmare told her, “I’ve been writing you,” she angrily replied, “I don’t have time for this!” I couldn’t believe it! My attention immediately turned from the State investigator to the scene unfolding before me. This of course upset Nightmare and us all.
This so-called mental health “specialist” never has time for us prisoners. She walks the hall like a woman who hates dogs but works in an ASPCA shelter. Her dismissal of Nightmare at that time was a dismissal of us all. Nightmare began to call her every name in the book—whatever name you could imagine one could call a female Pilgrim, he said it, and he said it with all the venom and grime of a man serving 38-years-to-life. The gates shook as prisoners yelled, releasing the pain and anguish of a doctor’s disregard, yelling to keep from crying, cursing to keep from praying. We stood on their gates and yelled, probably looking like a black and white James Cagney film I’d once seen. The Pilgrims were only interested in their homicide investigation; they didn’t care about Cheba, they didn’t care about his life or how he died. They were there simply to see if they could pin his death on one of us, give us some more time to make better shoes of our hides. But, their investigation was turned into a Nightmare. They fled the company faster than they arrived! The ‘not-so’ mental-health specialist departed with a fresh coat of Nightmare’s spittle on her long brown hair. Nightmare remains in the Box to this day. The Pilgrims always win.
There have been 13 deaths in this facility since the beginning of this year. One day I’ll write about the dead I knew—many of them much better than I knew Cheba. Whether their deaths were due to drugs or suicides they are all DEATHS OF DESPAIR. This mental health specialist knew this; she knows this, and has purposely failed us and continues to fail us miserably. All of these deaths have occurred since the implementation of the newly installed Deputy of Security (DSS). Security is the core concern of prison administrators and staff—they prioritize custody and control over care and concern for mental health considerations. [xvii]
Homer Venters, former chief medical officer at Rikers Island, describes prisons and jails as “primarily structures” with which local officials and leaders are loathe to interfere, thus allowing these institutions to escape accountability and engage in practices that are not evidence-based and inflict harm on incarcerated people. He emphasizes that this primary structure is directly at odds with how effective health care systems run.
It is good to talk about the problem, but better to offer the solution. Let’s develop free mental health services for marginalized populations in the free world. What the State spends on real mental health specialists it will save from decreased costs associated with incarceration.
We must care for people before they become ensnared in the school to prison pipeline—we can become the “loved ones” they lack. Next, let us mandate that the New York State Department of Corrections adheres to the HALT Act and ensures that prisoners are afforded at least six-hours of ‘out-of-cell’ time. If they fail to, let a reputable organization or pro bono attorney sue on behalf of the disenfranchised.
Not just the incarcerated, but their families as well, suffer from lack of connection to their loved ones. They are the ones that actually suffer the most when their incarcerated family members overdose or purposefully commit suicide.
*
Postscript
In prison, personal characteristics like race, ethnicity and language, or self-imposed divisions like gang affiliation or religion, divide us. These divisions are sometimes imposed upon us against our will. I remember a Jamaican friend of mine named D. He was particularly upset that he couldn’t hide his ethnicity because of his strong Jamaican accent. As soon as he spoke, the Dreds[xviii] called him over. That meant that he had their protection and allegiance, but also earned their scrutiny. Cheba, though clearly Latino, gave his allegiance without division. He spun the yard with the Whites; he ate with the Muslims and polied[xix] with the Black-Black men. I mention Black twice because there are some Black men who are simply prisoners: they spin the yard, they go to chow, they participate in school or vocational, or whatever. Then, there are other Black men—prisoners—who are conscious of their Blackness and constantly speak about their culture, history and important historical figures; Chris was one of those Black prisoners. Chris is now home—free after doing 25 years straight—but the vision of him lying on the floor under those yard phones still plays vividly in my mind.
It was an early morning rec period, about 8 a.m., and we just got out there; Chris was about 6 or 7 phones away from me. Although Chris didn’t hail from the Caribbean, the Caribbean dudes, namely a Haitian brother named Zee, would hold a phone for him. I remember Chris’s pants sagging as he looked to the right towards my direction at nothing in particular with a confused expression on his face. I could see him clearly, as he turned towards the sun, its rays striking his face, illuminating his furrowed brow. He then started shaking and fell over onto the ground.
Now, Chris was not known for doing any funny drugs—just a little bud every then and now—so, of course, prisoners were alarmed by his collapsed frame and began alerting the officers, who were as usual unaware. When the medical response came, it was Cheba who was standing over Chris’s body as a protecting agent. This was the first time I really got to notice this man, Cheba. “Don’t hit him with that shit!” he stated strongly as the medics touched and prodded Chris. “Don’t hit him with that Narcan, he don’t do drugs!” Cheba exclaimed, as other prisoners began to gather behind him in support.
Narcan is a drug that the medics in prison carry when they respond to medical emergencies. Narcan is supposed to help someone in an opioid crisis, or what we call “an epi”, to come out of that state. A person having an epi may writhe on the floor or run around and jump; I’ve even seen some scream the craziest of personal revelations like, “Daddy no, stop! Daddy please, stop, please!”[xx] Cheba stood over Chris, overseeing the medic’s actions, ensuring they didn’t hit Chris with the Narcan. Because his stance was so strong, the Corrections Officers didn’t even ask him to back up, notwithstanding the group of prisoners standing behind him which he never seemed to notice. Because of Cheba’s watchful eye and unmovable stance they not only refrained from hitting Chris with Narcan, but wheeled him out the yard on a gurney, complete with a mattress with sheets and an adjustable frame so that he could sit up, looking left and right with that stupid expression on his face.[xxi] Chris’s gurney was much more comfortable than the one they carted Cheba’s body off the company in, but, then again, Chris was conscious.
[i] “On the Gate“: When a prisoner stands up at the bars of the cell he’s in, looking out; or, when a prisoner has a conversation with another prisoner locked in a cell further than the one next to him; or, when a prisoner is having a conversation with another prisoner that can be heard by prisoners further away then the next cell over.
[ii] Cap: Freestyle, lie, fabrication.
[iii] New York State Bar Journal (January/February 2023).
[iv] Tier/Company/Gallery: The floor of the housing Block where prisoners are held, comprising of 42-cells. This particular incident occurred in A Block, 2-Company.
[v] Roth supra note 1, at 92.
[vi] National Research Council, 2014. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes ands Consequences, Washington, D.C.: the National Academics Press, s://doi.org110.17226/18613, at 33, 35 – 36.
[vii] Id. at 36.
[viii] “His phone“: when prisoners in Green Haven, A-Block yard are released for rec, the first one to grab a particular phone owns that phone. He can pass it to whomever he wants but they cannot pass it to whomever they want without his expressed permission. They can only pass it back to the one who gave it to them. Failure to abide by this rule is a clear sign of disrespect. In other prison yards, phone usage is governed by gang affiliation, ethic or cultural background and/or religious group.
[ix] Alisa Roth, Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness 81, supra, not 1, at 89 (2018)
[x] “Box”: Segregated housing Unit (SHU). Twenty-three and one: twenty-three hours locked inside a 5×8 foot cell, with one hour in a 3×4 foot dog kennel. This punishment was regularly imposed for a period of 365-days for disciplinary infractions such as having marijuana detected in your urine after a random analysis.
[xi] It is after all, possible to still be alive even though a Corrections Officer with a certificate in CPR fails to detect your heartbeat through his blue plastic gloves.
[xii] This 1990’s policy exists to this day and reached its apex in 2012 with Michael Bloomberg’s “Stop and Frisk” policy (the same as Giuliani’s under another name). It was deemed discriminatory and unconstitutional by the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York when an Officer secretly recorded several roll-call meetings where Police Sergeants explicitly instructed their officers to stop Black and Brown men and frisk them. Once exposed, Bloomberg was unapologetic.
[xiii] He worked the overnight 12pm to 8am shift at a Supermarket supply factory, but on this day he’d scored some overtime (8 a.m. – 4 p.m.); it was now almost six in the evening. He used the knife to open boxes at work and had forgotten it in his pocket. When his overtime shift had ended he went straight to his baby mother’s house and stopped at the store, per her request, for a couple of items. He was chopping it up with a couple of guys he knew from her area when he was approached for suspected loitering. The guys he was speaking with had IDs that identified their address as the building he was standing in front of – he didn’t. Loitering, for Black folk in New York City, under Giuliani’s administration, was determined by the address on their State identification Card. Unfortunately, this suspect lived with his mother in another borough.
[xiv] Roth, Supra, note 1, at 8.
[xv] Katie Rose Quandt and Alexi Jones: Research Roundup: Incarceration can cause lasting damage to mental health (May 13, 2021).
[xvi] Id.
[xvii] See, Matt Walkins, Jail – Attributable Deaths, New Thinking podcast, s://courtinnovation.org/publications/homer-venter.
[xviii] Caribbean brothers. This particular group was Jamaican, but, anyone from the Caribbean area (Haiti, Barbados, even Panama for example) would be included in this group.
[xix] Politiced: Discussed important issues like world politics, race and religion.
[xx] That guy was a gang member and, as soon as his epi was over, he was questioned and kicked out of that particular organization.
[xxi] It turns out Chris was curious that morning, possibly because his usual bud intake wasn’t enough, or maybe he’d just ran out of it. Zee was smoking K2 on the phone next to him and offered Chris a hit; Chris accepted his offer and the rest ensued. I guess you can never know a person completely. When I spoke to Chris later, after his recovery, he told me that he’d sniffed heroine a couple of times prior to his incarceration. That was a big revelation for me because he was a young man, barely in his 20s when he was arrested, and he was from Brooklyn like me, and we didn’t do hard drugs like that. But, then again, who am I to judge. I never knew I’d wind up here in prison myself. I guess you can never know yourself completely.
My name is Johnny Lynch. I am an Incarcerated Individual housed in Green Haven Correctional Facility. I’m working hard at obtaining an exoneration, earning my bachelor’s degree in Public Health and Administration as a Bard College undergraduate student, learning more about criminal justice and constitutional law (which I find compelling), and bettering myself as a human being every day. I am also the founder of a nonprofit organization—it can be found at YWEMATTER.com. I will be including copies of my donated editorials and books for sale and/or review on the site as well. We are currently looking for volunteers to help with our program initiatives. The best way to reach me is through JPAY. I also have an existing Facebook account under iohnnyluynch@facebook.com; however, I can only access it once a month or so. Therefore, opening a JPAY account will be the best and most efficient way to contact me. Talk to you soon!
