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I had said I wasn\u2019t gonna write no more poems like this Michigan has one women\u2019s prison, the Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, and it is a piece of work. On Monday, attorneys representing 20 women filed a $500 million lawsuit, claiming that recorded and recording strip searches constitutes invasion of privacy, intentional abuse, and violation of rights. According to the filing<\/a>, \u201cDefendants \u2026 implemented a policy of recording strip searches that they knew or should have known would trigger trauma responses in a population with high rates of sexual abuse history \u2026. What these women continue to endure is nothing short of horrific. This case exposes a grotesque abuse of power that directly retraumatizes survivors of sexual assault \u2026. This history of problematic strip search practices at WHV demonstrates a recurring pattern.\u201d Since its inception, Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility has a demonstrated recurring pattern of willful, intentional violence against women.<\/p>\n In 2012, Carol Jacobsen, founder and Director of the\u00a0Michigan Women\u2019s Justice and Clemency Project<\/a>,\u00a0noted<\/a>, \u201cAbu Ghraib has nothing on Huron Valley.\u201d She was describing the irony that Huron Valley was meant to solve the crisis of abuse of women prisoners in the Robert Scott Correctional Facility. As a result of widespread torture and abuse, Scott was closed in 2009, and all the women were moved to Huron Valley, which, according to Carol Jacobsen, was worse than Scott.<\/p>\n In 2014, Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility was investigated for human and civil rights abuses against mentally ill female patients<\/a>.<\/p>\n In November 2015, a twenty-five-year-old Black woman, Janika Nichole Edmond died<\/a>, or better was executed, in the Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility. Janika Edmond\u2019s story is short and terribly familiar: Janika Edmond lived with mental illness. Once in Michigan\u2019s `criminal justice\u2019 system, her condition deteriorated. She had a history of assaulting prison guards, which resulted in her being sent to solitary, which resulted in her becoming more aggressive. The rate of `incident reports\u2019 skyrocketed. No one did anything. In 2014, Janika Edmond made a rope out of a towel and tried to hang herself. Earlier in 2015, Janika Edmond was found with a razor. She said, repeatedly, that she was \u201ctired of being here<\/a>\u201d and was hearing voices. Unfortunately, no one on staff heard or listened to Janika Edmond\u2019s voice. The day she died, Janika Edmonds asked for a suicide prevention vest. The guards laughed. Hours later, she lay dead on the floor. \u201cThe death report provided by the MDOC [Michigan Department of Corrections] for Edmond shows her presumed cause of death was suicide<\/a>.\u201d That was no suicide. That was murder at the hands of the State.<\/p>\n In 2019, the Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility was sued for\u00a0\u201cperilous\u201d conditions<\/a>.\u00a0According to the lawsuit<\/a>, \u201cThe women have complained about the presence of mold in the facility for years, and continue to do so, but their pleas have been ignored.\u201d\u00a0Huron Valley \u201cis operating under a state of degradation, filth, and inhumanity, endangering the health and safety of incarcerated women<\/a>.\u201d One of the attorneys described Huron Valley as \u201cmedieval and dungeon-like<\/a>.\u201d Three weeks ago, six years after the lawsuit was filed, a Michigan community forum heard the following, \u201cThe Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility is accused of having severe cases of black mold<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Six years ago, we wrote<\/a>, \u201cMichigan\u2019s only women\u2019s prison, the Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, is the architecture of shame in the United States of America. Michigan built a special hell for women, the Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, and it\u2019s been going on for years and it\u2019s going on now. Have we no shame?\u201d Nine years ago, we wrote<\/a>, \u201cWhat happened to Janika Nichole Edmond? Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, just another Black woman crying out for help,\u00a0dying in agony<\/a>, \u201ctired of being here.\u201d In her death, she joins \u201cthe most common.\u201d\u00a0Who cares?<\/a>\u00a0Who cares?<\/a>\u00a0Who cares?\u201d<\/p>\n How many more lawsuits will it take, how many more tortured and traumatized women, how many more corpses? How often must we discover the brutality of our \u201ccaring\u201d before we finally demolish the special hell for women we have constructed not once but every day that we allow it to continue. Michigan\u2019s special hell for women, Women\u2019s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, belongs to each and every one of us.<\/p>\n (by Dan Moshenberg)<\/p>\n
\nGil Scott-Heron<\/a><\/p>\n