Surviving Susan Lopez: Mother's Day Grief.

One of the hardest, yet most profoundly meaningful, aspects of the work I do is to bear witness to the suffering of others and help them amplify their voices in any number of ways, in hopes that the rest of us are moved enough by them to change the trajectory we're on.


This is the grief of the parents of Susan Lopez, going into this past family-oriented weekend. Soon it will be their first Father's Day without her, each of her kid's birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the anniversaries of her birth, and of her death...

"When Jesus was a prisoner"
Matthew ch 25: v 35
Christmas, 2010
Phoenix, AZ

Rick Lopez and the Flores families have a difficult, deeply painful road ahead yet - all of the survivors of prison violence and neglect do. May we never again need to hear the grief of a mother who has buried her child in order to bring about a fundamental change in how we view and treat each other here, whatever our respective status or class...


Thank you, Sammy and Gina, for sharing this with us. Our condolences to the entire family.

-----------------left with broken hearts #2------------

A few years ago, my husband and I, together with Susan and her husband Rick, built a beautiful horse corral. I bought a mare, and someone gave us this big black gelding. Susan loved him. One day I went outside our 2 1/2 acre home, and I saw Susan on top of Moose, Rick leading the horse with a rope. I couldn`t believe what I saw, Susan riding Moose! She looked like a giant, but she was so happy, it seemed like nothing in the world mattered. Rick looked nervous, and would tell her "come on get down, get down!"

She loved horses like her mom. She loved cats, they were her life. She hated when anyone messed with them. She loved to look at the stars, and loved Jesus with all her heart. Our hobby was taking care of the horses; me and Susan would feed them and bathe them. I will always miss that...

From my horse corrals, about 4 miles from my back yard, you can see a hill with two giant water tanks. My daughter is buried on the other side of that hill. I am torn apart in my heart, its so hard to go feed the horses. Everytime I do, I see that hill, and I think of her. I break down crying; I'm torn apart. I then go to my front yard to sit on my deck. I look to the right and again I see the hill. I drive to town and I see the hill. It hurts, we loved her so much.

If you, the people working in Perryville prison, have any children then you know the love a parent has for their children, if you truly love them. I know me and my husband do; we loved Susan. And if you, the people working at Perryville prison, would have just listened to the cry of a wonderful woman, she may have touched your heart. And you might have change your ways, and done your job right. My daughter Susan would probably still be alive, that's what she was about. A beautiful woman full of love and kindness.

Again, whoever is responsible for the wrongful death of our daughter: God knows the truth. and may he find it in his heart to forgive you.

sammy & gina flores

(dad, mom)

Rape is Rape: More CCA abuses at Saguaro.

According to Courthouse News this week, a suit was filed against the State of Hawaii and Corrections Corporation of America due to the October 2009 sexual assault of a prisoner who was coerced to perform oral sex on CCA Saguaro Correctional Center guard Richard Ketland. Apparently in Eloy, Arizona, the rape of a prisoner brings - at worst - a felony charge of "unlawful sexual contact," and can be settled as a lesser offense so as to only require probation.

The guy he assaulted was just in on a drug charge, by the way, for those of you to whom it matters.

The real "truth in sentencing" in America is that you may be raped, regardless of the severity of your own crime. As for Ketland - on July 14, 2010 he plead guilty to "attempted unlawful sexual conduct" (a class 6 felony), and sure didn't hit the news or go to prison.

I doubt he did a day in jail, either.

You wouldn't know this kind of thing happens here from the mainstream media in Arizona. Here's an interesting article in the region's Tri-Valley Central notifying the nearby Florence community of sex offenders who have been released there. That was posted the day after Ketland's victim filed suit. I don't find any mention of a CCA guard sexually assaulting a prisoner at all, though, after a number of different searches of the publication: nothing on Ketland even in the deeper archives.

I only got six hits on Google when I looked up the terms " 'richard ketland' cca prison arizona", too.

I assure the uninitiated out there: forcing someone to their knees and ejaculating in their mouth is a pretty heinous form of penetration. Most of us would call that rape. Prison guards in this state have the authority to use lethal force against prisoners to prevent them from harming anyone else or escaping - and no one believes a "criminal" over a "cop". The victim could have easily been crucified by Ketland and CCA if he even survived putting up a fight.

I'd hope that if the same thing happened to me in Pinal County, the good sheriff and prosecutor would call rape what it is and treat it accordingly - especially if my assailant wore a uniform and a badge, and carried the responsibility of the public's trust.

I guess I should commend the Pinal County prosecutor for calling it a crime at all. Still, I'm disappointed. Some of you should remember that in December 18 other prisoners from the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy filed suit over brutality by guards on a massive scale. I have yet to hear anything about criminal charges being filed for the assault, intimidation, threats to prisoners and families, etc. - crimes that were apparently perpetrated with the blessing of the CCA warden.


So, I again urge the public that cares - wherever you may be - to contact the Pinal County Sheriff, Paul Babeu, the Pinal County Attorney, James P. Walsh, and the Arizona media to shine a spotlight on this abuse and prosecute the criminals working for CCA at Eloy's Saguaro Correctional Center. All the contact info you need is here from December: "Prosecute CCA prisoner abuse." If you didn't speak up against violence and abuse then, please do so now.

For reference, here's the Private Corrections Working Group's rap sheet on CCA prisons across the country; they have four facilities in Eloy alone.

And here's the Hawaiian victim's actual legal claim...

Welcome to Eloy, AZ. Note their affection for Jesus.

He was a prisoner, too.

CCA, Eloy: Jesus was a Prisoner, too.

Driving home from visiting a state prisoner for Christmas today, I was struck by how many prisons and detention centers are in towns (and wasteland) right off of the I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson - most located in Pinal County. Eloy is one such town - "city", rather, as I discovered when I turned off of the highway at one of their exits.

Lo and behold, not only is Eloy teeming with prisons (4 of Correction Corporation of America's 6 institutions of incarceration are located there, including Red Rock and Saguaro Correctional Centers), but it is also apparently a City of God. Christ's Father, that is.

Look closely at their sign...

Now, I actually found hope in that sign, but there are a lot of ways that could be read. Eloy, like virtually all prison towns, feeds largely on the lives of people imprisoned there from other places - mostly poor neighborhoods of big cities like Phoenix. Just listen to how prisons are sold to hungry communities: while saving the state money they promise revenue to build local schools with, jobs to fuel the economy, and bodies to add to the census and political pocketbook - bodies of people who have been stripped not only of their freedom as punishment, but also of the one right that most distinguishes U.S. citizens from non-citizens: the right to vote.

How that perverse penalty for most felons, regardless of the severity of their crime, is not considered a violation of the 8th Amendment in light of Trop v. Dulles, I don't know. I have my own feelings about citizenship in this country, but that's another blog post for another time. The point is that in a case in which a soldier was stripped of citizenship, the Supreme court found that "the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society... is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself..."

It's worth looking at, this whole felon dis-enfranchisement thing. It's a holdover from the Reconstruction era when former slaves were criminalized just so they couldn't vote or live free. That was well over a century ago. What are we still doing it for? I think it's one big contributing element to guards dehumanizing prisoners such that they can perpetrate the most disturbing violence on them without much regard to consequences - the fact that we already collectively diminished their basic rights.

In any event, American prisoners are not only widely marketed, traded and sold as commodities because states pay to confine them, but - as an end run around the Emancipation Declaration - they are even constitutionally defined as slaves. Both their labor and their mere existence are exploited to generate income for "host" (actually, "parasitic") communities, private investors, corporate and municipal employers of prisoners, vendors of all sorts - from those supplying commissaries/canteens to those monopolizing lucrative contracts for collect calls home to impoverished families.

The most revered beneficiaries of the criminalization and incarceration of vast numbers of the poor are those whose livelihoods (and children's medical care) depend on "fighting crime," "insuring justice," and "promoting public safety". Let's not forget our beloved politicians, too. They rake in money, adoration, and power from that in all sorts of ways.

Add all those folks up and it's no surprise that our society - particularly this state - fails to invest in proven strategies for reducing crime and victimization in favor of disenfranchising and dis-empowering those people who might resist the machinery that so violently destroys their lives and communities in retaliation for their offenses against property and the state.

One such person engaged in resistance would have been Christ. He really was a freedom-fighter, actually. A lot of people conveniently forget this, but he was a prisoner, too. Remember that line about "whatsoever you do for the least of these, you do for me"? He was talking about prisoners, among others.

So, to say that "the world needs Jesus" could mean that the world needs more prisoners, or it could mean that the world needs more forgiveness and grace. It could mean we need more bodies to buy and sell - and more consumers and workers to exploit for profit - or it could mean we need to overturn the moneylenders' tables and loudly protest the torture of our prisoners at the hands of sadistic and vindictive guards.

I don't know what the City of Eloy means to say by promoting Christ in the world - they will have to show us that themselves. I know what Jesus said about poverty, exploitation, judging others harshly, and caring for our prisoners. It's all spelled out pretty clearly in the Gospels. If you read only one, choose Matthew. Hit the Sermon on the Mount and then Matthew 25:35-40 in particular. Then tell me if the world needs more prisoners, or more mercy. More punishment or more care...


We have been at war in Afghanistan for nine years now, and in Iraq for almost as long (or more than twice as long, if you count the casualties of the sanctions). That's longer than any declared war in our national history, and there's really no end in sight, despite what time-lines the President offers. We're still sending our youth off to kill or be killed in the name of liberty and justice for all around the world, while doing so little to defend those two values here at home.

I find that unacceptable.

My wish for the new year is that the spirit of the Christ whose life and teachings I myself have learned something from is recognized and honored in every prisoner we hold in our facilities of detention, correction, and punishment - particularly by those among us who identify as "Christian". They seem to hold most of the keys to those places, ironically.

If the City of Eloy is truly a City of God, as it would seem they purport to be - then the Pinal County Sheriff and prosecutor would go after the abusive guards at Saguaro as swiftly and surely as CCA will go after the prisoners who rioted at Red Rock this week. They would not fear the political reprisal of honest citizens for doing so. If anything they would be seen as heroic for aggressively championing the human rights of people literally in chains who are at the mercy of their tormentors.

Likewise, if Eloy is a City of God, then CCA wouldn't get away with defending the employee misconduct at their institutions that we've heard about this month from Hawaiian prisoners. They would be out in front of this lawsuit, disciplining and referring the guards in question - as well as the warden there - for criminal prosecution, which the local criminal justice system would jump on. Of course, last I saw CCA was defending the despicable videotaped brutality of their guards in Idaho, too, so I don't expect that much of them. But I expect more of a City of God.

The state feeds us fear to maintain power, but in truth most American prisoners haven't physically harmed anyone but themselves. Even many who are charged with "violent" crimes never struck a soul. Robbing a bank with nothing more than a squirt gun or a note, for example, is considered a "violent" crime. So is brandishing a box cutter at security guards chasing you down for shoplifting (that got one mentally ill kid I adore 5 years, including a year in Supermax).

Now, if those are violent crimes, what do we call repeatedly assaulting and threatening to rape, torture, and kill helpless people? Why is every City of God not up in arms? Which of our brothers are we forgiving for what, and whose cries are we drowning out with our choirs on Sundays? Shall we continue to extract an eye for a dollar or a tooth for every rebuke of the state, and pay a dollar of our own money to those who threaten to extinguish prisoners' lives?

That isn't even how it was supposed to work in the Old Testament, much less the one dominated by Jesus.

I've been born more than once, I am sure, but because of the way Christ's life and message and symbols have been abused, I don't call myself a "Christian" or abide by the mandates of any religion. I just try my best to live by the principles and values that ring true to me, most of which are common but not exclusive to the Christian faith. Self-professed Christians out there need to consider for themselves what his truth is and how to live it; I just wish that if they identify Jesus as their role model they would follow his guidance a little more closely. The world would be a bit better for it...and we wouldn't constantly be at war in his name, either.

Christ, I have no doubt, would deeply disapprove of our system of "justice" in America - particularly Arizona - and how we perpetrate violence on our prisoners. After all, he was criminalized for defying both capital and the state, and lived and died as a prisoner himself. As I read it, he went out that particular way for a reason, too.

Anyway, for the sake of the thousands of disenfranchised, incarcerated and otherwise detained souls whose misery they have profited from, I hope Eloy is a City of Jesus' version of God. How they and CCA deal with the perpetrators of abuse in their prisons will tell us much more than the signs they've placed at their gates do.

Roosevelt Community Church, Phoenix, AZ.

December 26, 2010.

(read CCA's rap sheet at the Private Corrections Working Group's website. Catch up on CCA's Idaho "Gladiator School", too. But give the people of Eloy a chance...)