Saturday, October 26, 2013

We had to turn on the furnace for the last couple of days.  I think we need our ducts cleaned.  I'm all stuffed up, sneezing, eyes itching.
One time I was sent to fill in at Huron Valley Men's before it was changed into the mental health facility.  I had only been there once or twice before.  I had to go out to the segregation unit to do some hearings.  When I went into the hearing room, I started sneezing, repeatedly.  By the time they brought the prisoners in for hearings, my nose was dripping and my eyes were watering.  I'm not sure what they thought of me in that state.
They had a wing on segregation at that time that they referred to as the Cutter's Wing, for prisoners who did self mutilation.  They had to find implements to cut themselves so they broke the sinks ( pre-stainless steel installation ), or pull wires from the bunk bed platforms. The staff wrote them up for destruction of property.  I routinely ordered restitution, which was routinely never collected. The first hearing I did that day was on a guy who inserted said wire into his penis.  The reporting officer had taken a picture for evidence.  Oh, yea.  I looked at it, and thought to myself, "Oh, crap, I forgot about these guys."  I was very proud of myself for not reacting at all.  There was one guy who was legendary for cutting his abdomen open and exposing his intestines.  He cost the DOC thousands of dollars in medical care.  The shrinks were never able to come up with a way to convince him to stop.  This unit has since been disbanded.
There were several women prisoners who did self mutilation.  Sometimes they would become a couple, and cut each other.  That was more disturbing to me than anything the men did, although the men tended to do more medically dangerous cutting.  There was one couple I saw frequently.  The dominant woman reminded me of the character Angelina Jolie played in Girl Interrupted, evil and manipulative and sadistic.  The other woman was a petite half Asian woman, very pretty.  She worshiped the dominant woman and kept going along with her antics which was jeopardizing getting a parole.  Both the hearing investigator and I tried our best to get her to cut loose from her partner with little success.  She finally got paroled.  I hope she can stay out.

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