On the phone, her voice sounded calm, light, almost light-hearted. “I feel safe from them in here.” Jan Hamilton was describing her life as an inmate in POD-C at the Park County Jail in Fairplay, CO. A senior, diagnosed with cancer, she was placed in the small, bone chilling cell – as she puts it – “to die.” The door to her cell has a four by 10-inch slot that offers a view of the women’s dining hall. One of the inmates had threatened her life, so she was placed in insolation, she was told, for her own safety. “There are 20 inmates in this section. Most are lesbians.”
In a hand-written letter, she described the conditions of her cell. Reading it, it seemed almost as if she was giving Rachel Maddow and Sally Kohn a guided tour of her small cell along with a team of investigators: including a lawyer from Human Rights Watch, someone from the Elder Abuse hotline, and a senior official from the Colorado Department of Corrections.
“My bed is sheet metal. There is no heat, I have only two thin blankets to keep me warm, and I’ve spent 10 days and nights in the same bloody clothes. In the middle of the cell is “a 14 inch drain is filled with stagnant contaminated sludge where bugs come and go 24/7.”
Could Hell be worse?
When Jan was transferred from her hometown of Aspen – where she had spent most of her adult life – to Fairplay, she realized that it could be a one-way journey. As she tells it: “Officer Bird, who locked up my cancer medication in the basement of the jail in Aspen, told me: “I’m going to make sure that you die in the Park County jail.”
When asked, Officer Bird said: “She’s guilty of multiple crimes. We sent her to Park County because she was abusing staff.”
I call it PTSD and elder abuse. Sentenced to 64-months in jail for trespassing on church property, she describes the charges against her this way: “I had an invitation to attend an event the church. Because I refused to convert to their belief system, I was accused of trespass; then violating parole, and filing a ‘false flower report.”
Now isolated 23-hours a day, alone in a small jail cell, Jan Hamilton lives far away from any family or friends who could visit her. She is four hours away from her oncologist at Aspen Valley Hospital and two hours away from the nearest hospital by helicopter.
Her oncologist at the Aspen Valley Hospital had agreed to start cancer treatments with Immunotherapy and Genetic Testing. “Park County Jail does not offer this care,” she reports.
Does the Colorado Department of Corrections have a duty to provide cancer treatment to a prisoner who has been diagnosed with, or is dying of cancer? If the facility is unable, or unwilling to provide this care, do they have a duty to release that inmate so that – in this case – Jan Hamilton can receive the medical care she needs, at her own expense? If case law says YES, this information could be a missing piece of prison reform and hold the key to Jan’s release: homeward bound, not heaven bound.
