I couldn’t decide between the pit and GD, I decided on GD because some folks might want to defend the position of the warden.
Backstory here.
In a nutshell: Jason Yaeger is in the final year of a 5 year sentence for meth possession. He is scheduled to be moved to a halfway house in Nebraska in August to serve the final 11 months of his sentence. He is currently housed in a minimum security prison, a former college surrounded by 2 foot walls(the point being that the state obviously does not consider him very dangerous).
And he has a 10 year old daughter in Nebraska who is dying (as in it’ll be this month) of brain cancer. Her final request is to see her father again, and to have him present when she dies for comfort. Mister Yaeger applied to the warden to be moved to the halfway house (which is near his daughter; she is too weak to be moved near him) 4 months early so he can be with his daughter when she dies, he did this under the “extraordinary circumstances” provision that is in place for cases like this and he was rebuffed by the warden.
Mr. Yaeger even offered to serve double his remaining time-22 months instead of 11-if they would let him be with his daughter as she passes. This was denied too.
WTF?
Look, I’m a pretty hard core crime and punishment guy, but this is just tragic. The guy is not a violent felon, is not asking for his sentence to be commuted or reduced or anything-quite the opposite in fact-, is not asking to be placed in any facility that he was not scheduled to go to anyway, just the timing of the move, and is being told no by the warden, AFAICT, just because he can. If this isn’t an extraordinary circumstance, what is??? I guess this finally puts paid to the lie that the prison system is in any way shape or form about rehabilitation, it’s only about punishment, punishment, punishment, in this case the person being punished most is a terminally ill ten year old girl dying by degrees as the one person who can comfort her, her father, is forced to pour his soul down a fiber optic network to her instead of holding her in his arms as he should. This stinks. Can anyone defend this? I can’t and I’m usually on that side of these debates.
thanks to the war on drugs, stuff like this goes on all the time. I see it a lot among my patient population. Those cases just don’t get publicity like this one does. Perhaps generally because the dying person is not often a cute white child.
Gee, working in prisons make you cynical much? :dubious: FTR, I had no idea of the race of the people involved until I saw the picture in the link AudryK provided. The botched abortion that is the war on drugs needs to be ended immediately, whatever you think of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on drugs has far more immediate, severe and long term negative consequences for each and every American.
I don’t know, Dave…I read Qadgop as essentially agreeing with you, but noting that this happens more often than makes the news. And it doesn’t make the news because the dying person isn’t an inmate’s daughter, but his older brother, or his elderly mother or his estranged father…people who aren’t necessarily as sympathy-inducing as a little girl. And you have to admit, it’s the missing white girl or the runaway white heiress or the acting-out white actress who get in the news. You don’t see half as much attention by the news programs when it’s a black or hispanic girl who’s missing.
Actually, I don’t. I hear this bandied about all the time as if it’s an unquestionable truth, but I just don’t buy it. Black folks constitute about 16% of the population of the U.S. IIRC, if only one in every 7 stories of this type involve a black person, that’s still dead flat on the statistical mean. I have absolutely no data on what percentage of tragic stories that get media play involve whites and what percentage involve blacks, but even if there are more total stories involving white folks that does not mean that black folks aren’t proportionally represented. I am not saying that I know you are wrong, because I don’t-but I suspect that you might be and in any case I don’t think it’s quite the forgone conclusion that you seem to find it.
I disagree. We already have legalized drugs (alcohol). Marijuana has been decriminalized. the highly addictive/destructive drugs should not be legalized because they affect both the person and the community at large. Even if Meth was legalized and given away free it would still devastate the community.
But to the case, I would think the case was “extraordinary circumstances” but I am the first to admit I don’t know what this, what it’s for, or the criteria involved. I would have chipped in for an ankle bracelet for a short-term pass. If you can’t work toward rehabbing someone then there is a flaw in the system.
Yaeger made his appeal through the proper channels, but got denied. The warden used his discretion and decided against allowing the visit. Nothing morally outrageous or deliberately hurtful happened here, the warden simply decided for reasons not known to us that Jayci’s condition did not merit an early release, early transfer, or any other type of arrangement.
As we are not privy to how often prisoners’ family members become terminally ill, we can’t say how “extraordinary” these circumstances are. For the Yaegers, it is an understatement to say this is a devastatingly “extraordinary” event, but we are not going by their standard of extraordinary, we are going by the prison’s. There could be thousands of prisoners under the warden. If dozens of prisoners’ family members become terminally ill every year, how can the warden find this case extraordinary? It would be more tragic than others, sure, but I’m not sure it would be extraordinary.
Perhaps the warden denied his request because he was afraid it would establish a precedent for more prisoners to be released for similar reasons, which I can see being a huge PITA for the prison.
It’s tragic that Jayci developed cancer and became terminally ill, and it’s very unfortunate that Yaeger’s incarceration caused him to be away for most of her illness. But I can’t fault the warden for being inflexible with the terms of Yaeger’s incarceration. Mostly, I fault Yaeger for being an idiot for committing a crime that got him sent to jail. The years Yaeger lost with his family because he was in prison are entirely his fault. Jayci missing her dad and being “punished” with his absence is entirely his fault. The situation sucked, but it’s the kind of pain and loss you put yourself and your family through when you commit crimes and get yourself tossed in prison.
Without knowing the justification of the judge, this would be my best stab at it (giving judgy the benefit of the doubt that it’s not about spite).
I mean, it’s hard to know where to draw the line. What about other inmates whose parents are elderly and about to die? That’s a relatively common occurrence. Should they be allowed out to see their parents? How about if someone’s wife is in a car accident? What about if someone’s kid goes into a coma? Etc. etc. It’s really awful to be separated from loved ones when you’re in prison, esp. for a nonviolent offense, but come on. He was making meth. What did he think would happen? I think it’s pretty presumptuous of him to assume that he would be able to be granted a special exception for this. It would have been kind-hearted by the judge, but part of judges’ jobs is not to establish precedents that would open up cans of worms.
I agree that that’s probably the reason, but personally I am completely happy with the precedent " Any non violent inmate in the last year of their sentence already scheduled for release to a transitional facility may have that release date moved earlier if they have a child who is terminally ill and expected to live no more than four weeks provided they are willing to serve double their remaining time in jail after the child dies". I can’t imagine that you’d have more than maybe a dozen of these situations a year across the entire U.S. I can live with that.