TEXAS GERIATRIC CENTER
On May 8, 2000, I was brought to the Texas Regional Medical Facility and put in the Geriat-ric Center. Dr. Lannette Linthicum, Director of TDCJ Health Care, made the move after a long campaign by my defense committee.
We had a successful letter-writing campaign on my web page: <http://standingdeer.homepage.com/index.html> .
They've got 154,000 prisoners in 116 prisons, 10,000 of them old and 5,000 in need of geriatric care, and right here is the only geriatric facility in the Texas prison system with 60 beds. That leaves about 4,940 old, disabled murkins struck out. People are dying to get in here. Literally. This Geriatric Center is a small building with 60 beds, but we have our own showers, clothing issue, chow hall, library, day rooms, and best of all, air-conditioning. In 100° heat with TX humidity, that's a blessing. Far as I know, this is the only air-conditioned facility in TDCJ. They brag about their control units being stifling hot in summer, and no prison in Texas that I know of is air-conditioned. This is their showplace to prove how their compassionate governor cares for the elderly and infirm. After I got here, all 18 members of the Corrections Board brought their guests through here. Tourists come through all the time.
They call Pack Prison, which I just left, a "geriatric center," but the 4 dorms where they keep the old men are just another part of the prison. They do absolutely nothing for them. The non-existent health care is the worst I've seen. LVNs who aren't qualified to do anything but empty bed pans, prescribe medicine. The old guys die like flies. It's a death camp. Even the guards call it " death row." They put the old men outside from 12 noon to 4 p.m.--the hottest part of the day--to sit on benches and do nothing. The concrete slabs under them go to about 130° in July and August. They do it so they can brag that everybody works, even the 92-year-olds.