When I mention to friends and acquaintances that I grew up on a reservation in the desert Southwest, they immediately assume that it was an Indian reservation. Most of them know that I am an Oklahoma Choctaw. Few realize that the Oklahoma Choctaw, unlike our brothers and sisters in Mississippi, never had a reservation. What’s more, when they learn that I grew up on the grounds of a federal prison they assume that my dad was an inmate. So, let me untangle all of this.
My father worked for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, our family lived in staff housing adjacent to the prison where my dad was employed, and that part of the prison grounds reserved for staff housing was referred to as the reservation.
For most of my adolescent and teenage years my dad was stationed at the Federal Correctional Institution at La Tuna, Texas, an architecturally beautiful, low security prison in the desert about 15 miles north of El Paso, Texas. La Tuna housed an inmate population that consisted of approximately 500 low-risk, male, non-violent offenders and a great many illegal aliens.
In addition to its working farm, furniture factory and inmate recreational facilities, La Tuna had a first class prison hospital. What’s more, if an inmate needed medical care beyond what the prison facility could provide, he would be transported to one of the hospitals in El Paso with which the prison had working relationships.
The point I am making here is that the 500 federal convicts who lived at La Tuna enjoyed first class medical care at the expense of American taxpayers. They still do. Courts have repeatedly reaffirmed the rights of those in our prisons to adequate medical care, and the federal Bureau of Prisons has always made such care available to it’s guests.
The 635 acres that make up La Tuna’s grounds are adjacent to the little town of Anthony, New Mexico-Texas. Back in the 1960s the city limit sign that welcomed motorists traveling north on US 80 stated a town population of 1,100 residents. Most residents obtained medical care for minor illnesses and injuries at the small medical office of the only doctor in town. If a patient couldn’t pay immediately, an arrangement was always worked out. If a patient required more intensive or specialized care, specialists and hospitals were available in either El Paso or Las Cruces, New Mexico. There, however, different rules applied.
Patients without either insurance or cash to pay the bill didn’t bother making the trip to El Paso or Las Cruces. Anthony wasn’t a particularly prosperous little town, and most of its residents were cash poor and uninsured. Needed medical care wasn’t nearly as accessible to the people of Anthony as it was to the 500 convicted felons and illegal aliens of La Tuna.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for first rate health care for federal inmates. I agree with every federal court that has considered the matter in the past 50 years—inmates have a right to adequate medical care. I’ll go further and say that every living human being has a right to adequate medical care.
It strikes me as somewhat ironic that courts which have so unyieldingly asserted the health care rights of criminals are powerless to recognize such a right for law abiding taxpayers. Congress, which appropriates the many millions of dollars necessary to provide for the medical needs of federal inmates, struggles over the question of whether taxpayers have a right to adequate medical care.
I wouldn’t dare to suggest or encourage acts of civil disobedience, and I would certainly never condone crime. That being said, it occurs to me that if I were seriously ill and uninsured, I might get angry at the system that denies me the basic right of health care. I might pick up a stone and throw it, and the stone might break a post office plate glass window. That’s a felony… that’s good enough to get me in, right?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Congress will not pass true health care reform unless they think they’ll get voted out of office if they don’t. They should be voted out of office because it is what we elected them elected them to do.
Throwing a rock through a window is a felony?
A-a-ah, Texas! A-a-ah, prison! No, I’m being neither facetious nor sarcastic here. I long for Texas, even tho’ it’s for a rather different aprt of the Lone Star State — which really IS like a “whole other country”! And I long to be back in Kairos Prison Ministry — even tho’ I ministered in TDCJ prisons rather than FCI units. I’ve been in the FCI in Ft. Worth, and joined with the description of La Tuna, I’d say that the latter (fed.) units are nicer-looking than the former (state).
I, too learned a lot in prison, and not just about applying Matthew 25:35d personally. We Kairos volunteers went in to be a blessing and to share God’s grace — and got blessed and learned far more that we gave, I think! Kaiors is a fantastic — no, make that a God-empowered — ministry. And the wonders/miracles I’ve witnessed among the inmates transformed is wonderful!