28981: Karshan (on 28943) breaks down question of food and prisoners (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Michelle Karshan <michelle.karshan@gmail.com>

 Regarding prisoners and food: First, lets not confuse apples with bananas.


Persons held in police station holding cells DO NOT receive food.  It is
expected that their family will bring them food on a daily basis. When
someone is held at a police station holding cell their families can usually
drop by at any reasonable time to drop off a meal. Very often police ask the
person delivering the food to actually take a bite of the food before they
are allowed to leave it, to assure that the food has not been poisoned.

People held in the state prison system are supposed to receive two meals a
day. I know that at the National Penitentiary they do receive the two meals,
although there have been periods where the two meals are so deficient that
people develop Beri Beri, the preventable and treatable deadly illness
resulting from lack of B vitamins.

Often prisoners in the prison can't access the food or the person (usually a
prisoner) refuses to give them food.

Families can bring food to the National Penitentiary, usually at
a designated time and wait in long lines to deliver the food.  Again, they
may be asked to taste the food. Last year, at exactly the same time that
families were delivering food to loved ones at the National Penitentiary, an
armed commando attacked the prison.  After that episode, in which the
commandos killed an off duty officer in front of the prison, families were
not able to bring food in again for weeks.

Again, the problem is that people may find themselves in a police station or
prison far from home and therefore family can't travel easily to feed them.
Sometimes arrangements are made with relatives living nearby. Very often
family does not bring food -- sometimes they can't afford to travel or
provide food. The other reality is that there is no refrigeration for foods
being delivered so families typically only bring one meal.

Prisoners in police station holding cells, or even in prisons, can usually
purchase bread, juice, and other items from market people, but that
is contingent on the person having money to buy food.

We (Alternative Chance/Chans Altenativ - advocacy program for Criminal
Deportees in Haiti) experienced a crisis in 1998 when President Preval's
government started locking up arriving Criminal Deportees in various police
stations throughout the country.  It was unfair to expect that family
members would feed the prisoners because many of the deportees had no family
in Haiti and of course they were being held in jails very far from the towns
or cities where their families actually lived.  At that time our program had
to respond to that crisis because there were many Criminal Deportees, some
very sick with diabetes, high blood pressure, TB or AIDS, who were
languishing in jails without any meals. We ended up cooking the food
ourselves and delivering meals to various police stations throughout the
capital region including Thomasseau and Croix-des-Bouquets.  For the
Criminal Deportees imprisoned in Archaie and Leogane at the time, we had to
hire a local person to cook for the prisoners.

During that period of time, Claudette Etienne, a  mother of two from Miami
deported to Haiti as a Criminal Deportee, died after four days being held in
a police station on Delmas.Ms. Etienne had no food of her own and ate some
scraps given her by a police officer, and she drank the tap water. She
developed a fierce case of dysentery and died.

What I found amazing at the time, and have reflected on a lot again in the
last month, was the general indifference to the problem of Criminal
Deportees not being able to eat when in detention.  I appealed to many
people, both Haitian and American, and clergy, at the time but very few
people responded.  I think people were not sympathetic because it
involved convicted criminals from the US.  Some people were appalled and
were supportive, and a Haitian woman from the elite donated lots of food
that we in turn used to cook the meals with. For us, it was impossible at
the time to sit by while anyone was starving to death - convicted felon or
not.

When President Aristide returned to the presidency the practice was to
detain arriving Criminal Deportees in the National Penitentiary where they
did at least receive daily meals.

Recently the new government ordered newly arriving Criminal Deportees to be
held in police stations, where once again they sat without any food. Now the
process is to detain them in the National Penitentiary, although some may
still be held in police stations where they won't receive any food.

www.alternativechance.org

--

Michelle Karshan
Michelle.Karshan@gmail.com
212-613-6033