Women Prisoners with AIDS

Dying at Chowchilla!

Three women have died at the Central California Women's Prison at Chowchilla. Their deaths are horror stories of neglect, misdiagnosis and abuse. Sonja Stapel was not diagnosed with AIDS until a week before her death. Her cellmates fought for six weeks to get her medical care. Jackie Jenkins was diagnosed and then sent to work on the prison farm with dangerous pesticides. Her hazardous job and the lack of medical services at Chowchilla led to her death.

The Coalition to Support Women Prisoners at Chowchilla calls for an immediate legislative investigation into the deaths of three women and into the quality of medical treatment at the prison.

Women with AIDS at Chowchilla believe that the prison system is trying to kill them: "Murder by proxy." Medical neglect, segregation, lack of confidentiality and high stress are ingredients for a death sentence for women prisoners with AIDS. An independent investigation is essential to win real changes in medical services at Chowchilla prison: quality health care, the hiring of an HIV/AIDS medical specialist, higher nutritional diets and vitamin supplements for women prisoners with HIV/AIDS, a prisoner-initiated peer education and counseling program and compassionate release for all terminally ill prisoners.

For more information, contact Coalition to Support Women Prisoners at Chowchilla, P.O. Box 14844, San Francisco, CA 94114 or call (415) 641-4156 and (510) 530-6214.

NCX Feb/Mar 1996
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