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Sean Reece: My name is Sean Reece. I’m 35 years old. I ended up committing attempted
***. And when I came here and I got this job, and I started showering people and helping
people change diapers, and I was like, “Man, these people are really sick, man,” you
know? And it just opened up my heart.
[On-screen text: 3,300 U.S. inmates die of illness and aging while in prison each year.]
Reece: You know, my mom was in prison; my dad went to prison. I can say that I was a
really, really angry person. I didn't care that you were another human being. That didn't
matter.
A guy named Nick – I used to go in his room and talk to him before he went to the hospital.
And when he came back – it was amazing, like, what the chemo and the cancer had did
to his body. You know, he stuck his hand out; he couldn't talk. He passed away a couple
of days later, and for a second, like, I didn't want to do this no more – because I didn't
want to see that.
The Rev. Keith Knauf (director of pastoral care): Well, we had a patient whose cancer
was just a horrible kind of cancer. And he was a white supremacist – swastikas and
other kinds of tattoos all over his body; arms, legs, everywhere. He became really good
friends with Sean, a black Muslim, and Sean took really good care of him, to the point
where he wanted Sean there with him; he trusted him. So here's a white supremacist and all
those walls are just falling down. Then when he died, it really affected Sean emotionally.
So hospice, in that sense, becomes a place of healing – within their spirit, within
their families and within the community – rather than just a place of death.
[On-screen text: There are 26,200 U.S. prisoners older than 65, mostly because of decades of
Arthur Mefford: I received a sentence of 54 years to life in prison under California’s
three strikes. My illness is terminal lung cancer. I applied for a compassionate release.
They said that I still posed a threat to society.
[On-screen text: California doctors recommended compassionate release for 1,157 seriously
ill prisoners from 1991 to 2010.]
[Of those, 30 percent were granted release.]
Knauf: There've been quite a few men that I have been in favor of compassionate release,
but they weren't able to get out. Many of the men are just totally incapable of doing
any other crime when they get out, because of the state of their physical condition when
they're here. No one of the decision-makers actually came down and looked at them. They
just looked at what was on paper. But it would have been nice if they just looked at them
and talked with them.
Mefford: I have three grandchildren I’ve never seen. I have a son I’ve never seen
before. And I'd like to have the chance to see them before I pass away.
[On-screen text: Paroling “permanently medically incapacitated inmates” could reduce prison
costs by about $200 million a year.]
Reece: You know, watching all these people die and then they put them in a bag and then
they wheel them off – I’m like, come on, man, there has to be something that's greater
than this. This job, if you allow it to – if you don't block yourself off, if you don't
close yourself off – then it will help you; it'll really help you to deal with a lot of
the issues that you might have. I figure God put me here, for whatever reason, he put me
here, so I’m going to figure out what that is.
[On-screen text: The Vacaville prison hospice was the first in the country when it opened
in 1985. There are now 73 more.]
Knauf: Why should we be returning good for evil? They have done real horrible things
to society, so we should do horrible things to them? No. These are human beings that are
broken, that need repair, that need healing. That is just the right thing to do. And so
in the hospice, we give them that healing, and I believe that heals society as a result.
[On-screen text: The Bay Citizen. Produced by Lonny Shavelson.]
[To learn more about prison hospice and compassionate release, visit BayCitizen.org.]