WHAT WOULD MS. SYBIL BRAND THINK?
Over the course of more than two decades, extreme overcrowding in California prisons led to horrendous conditions coupled with a shortage of medical specialists, resulting in a likely preventable death at least every week.
In 2013, Mark Ridley-Thomas appointed me to be one of ten members of the Sybil Brand Commission, a group of citizens designated to inspect Los Angeles County institutions, from prisons to county lockups to children’s group homes. While the commission was diverse, I was the only formerly incarcerated person on it, and I hoped to bring a critical eye to issues affecting inmates and children. I was honored to participate, but our responsibilities were daunting. Every Wednesday, the entire commission met. Each commissioner was responsible for two weekly inspections, and we rotated among the hundreds of county courts, camps, jails, and group homes.
In order to fulfill my role, I had to, once again, apply for clearance. Though I’d been approved several times in the past for sponsored programs, I had more recently been trying to gain personal clearance to visit my nephew in prison. But just like most every civilian with a criminal record, I was denied. The state policy was forced estrangement: spouses prohibited from seeing each other, or from bringing children to visit the incarcerated parent; adult kids cut off from reconnecting with an incarcerated parent; an auntie, such as myself, trying to be a supportive presence and positive role model in her nephew’s life.
So here I was, once again filling out all the paperwork, though I assumed that with the L.A. County Supervisor’s office behind me, my approval would go smoothly. How wrong I was. Different clearance protocols existed for county, state, and federal agencies—and guidelines were used selectively. I had to wait and wait, holding up my role on the commission, until, finally, my approval came through. But even though you had clearance one day, it was subject to change if anything in the system changed. A warden or chief retiring or being replaced, or an arbitrary change in policy, could render any current clearance invalid—and you’d be required to start all over again.
As part of the Sybil Brand Commission, I believed I’d be walking into prisons with some influence. The first thing I wanted to address was that I’d been noticing an alarming trend that antidepressants were being pushed aside in favor of new and stronger antipsychotics, which could double as sedatives. I heard many women complain that their dosage was too high and they felt cloudy. But in prison, complaining basically meant your dosage wasn’t high enough. The correct dose, it seemed, should subdue you, should shut you up. The Seroquel Shuffle, it would later be called, coined for an antipsychotic drug so powerful, prisoners could barely lift their feet when they walked. In prison, the zombie apocalypse was real. But when I brought up what I was seeing, the commissioners felt it was beyond our expertise to be commenting on medical aspects.
I was shocked to learn that when other commissioners toured a facility, they didn’t speak with inmates. They only spoke with administrators. To me, this seemed a gaping and absurd hole in the oversight process. How do you do an institution-wide inspection and not talk to the people who live there?
When we visited a group home, I introduced myself to the kids and asked, “Do you have activities? Are you forced to go anyplace? Are you forced to go to church? Are you kept from going to church?”
When I reviewed children’s case files, I was astounded at the levels of psychotropic drugs they, too, were receiving. “There’s no indication of anything to address behavior, they’re just drugging them,” I said to the commission. “There’s evidence these medications can have all sorts of side effects, including reproductive damage.” But the chairwoman told me I was overstepping my bounds.
When I inspected jails, I talked with the inmates. “They’re withholding my anxiety medication,” one woman told me. “They said they don’t have enough doctors right now, so I can’t see anyone.” She looked at me desperately. “I’m at the point, I want to take my life.”
When I recounted the interaction, some of the commissioners responded that people fabricate things.
But what about all the unacceptable conditions we could see with our own eyes? In a men’s jail: what looked like a cow’s watering bin, but was a stopped-up and overflowing urinal. In a women’s jail: white specks blowing out of the vents; brown water coming out of the faucets; moldy and rusted showers, the water temperature going from cold to scalding, blistering women’s skin. In the halls, I watched inmates cast their heads down when guards passed, as though we were back in the Jim Crow South, when blacks weren’t allowed to look whites in the eye.
Still, within the commission, I was put off, treated as though I didn’t have any expertise or knowledge. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw up my arms. “Well, hell, if we’re not going to actually do anything, why am I here?” I thought back to Sybil Brand herself. Her namesake county jail, where twice I’d been an inmate, had become so run down it was shuttered in 1997 and was now used for storage and the occasional bleak setting for a film or TV crime show. Now, here I was, trying to honor Ms. Brand’s legacy, but her namesake commission was turning out to be an exercise in futility. Our mandate was hugely important, but there was little if any room for meaningful action.
I went to Mark Ridley-Thomas with my concerns that the commission could be more effective. After further review, he put forward a board motion to limit the term of the chairperson. It took over a year, but, eventually, a new chairwoman came aboard.
At last, we could start making some progress. Word got out to the institutions that the Sybil Brand Commission would no longer be politely peeking around and leaving quietly. Now, as we inspected a facility, the top brass joined us. When we pointed out something that needed to be corrected, the correction was made. Plumbing was fixed; women were sent to the proper medical specialists; inmates who were eligible to vote were registered.
In a juvenile detention center, I spoke with a thirteen-year-old boy. “Why are you here?” I asked.
“Because I had bad attendance in school,” he replied.
“Why weren’t you going to school?”
“I couldn’t go by myself because of the gangs.”
I felt a stone in the pit of my stomach. Here was a kid being punished because his neighborhood was too dangerous for him to walk to school? How was I supposed to write this up in a report, that the entire situation was foul? Sure, we were making changes, but mostly spot corrections. As for systemic overhauls that could lead to a truly lasting impact, we weren’t making a dent. Not a single change the commission engaged in was going to stack the odds against this kid winding up in prison one day. Sadly, through no fault of his own, he was already halfway there.
One day, I received a call from Congresswoman Karen Bass. She was working on federal legislation to address family reunification for those with criminal records, and asked if she could accompany me on an inspection.
Together, the congresswoman, Commissioner Cheryl Grills, and I walked through the Los Angeles County Jail for Women in Lynwood, asking inmates if they’d speak to us about their children. Women’s eyes welled with tears as they talked about being separated from their kids. Some women had already lost their children to the Department of Children and Family Services, others were somewhere in the process, knowing that, but for a miracle, the loss was inevitable.
We stopped to talk with four women who were concocting something on paper plates. “It’s Chinese food night,” they told us. They explained how, the day before, they’d had cabbage on their dinner plates, and had scraped it off into plastic bags. They were adding the cabbage to ramen noodles they’d bought from the canteen, along with slices of summer sausage. To make sweet-and-sour sauce, they mixed packets of hot sauce with apple jelly that they’d collected at breakfast. When the meal was prepared, they sat down together for their version of a family dinner. It was endearing to watch these women making the best of things with their jailhouse feast.
But I had my commission hat on. “How much did you pay for the noodles at the canteen?” I asked. Each single package was $1.18. On the outside, you could get a 12-pack for under $1.50. “And the summer sausage?” A mini-size was $3.75.
Later, I talked with the sheriff about the exorbitant prices in the canteen, and about the lack of practical choices; for example, they carried only mini-bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The following week, when I arrived for our inspection, the sheriff proudly told me they’d procured 12-ounce bottles of Pantene shampoo.
“Great,” I said. “How much are you charging?”
“Ten dollars.”
My jaw hung open. “I can get a 12-ounce bottle of Pantene at the drugstore for 3 or 4 bucks.”
He shrugged. “That’s the price.”
I crossed my arms. “That’s exploitation.”
The Sybil Brand Commission requested to talk with the prison commission that approves the vendor contracts. But we were told they didn’t have to comply, that these matters were not subject to the Brown Act, which protected the public’s right to participate in local legislative meetings. In other words, I could rant and rave all I wanted, but nothing was going to happen.