What Happens to the Blind in Prison?

What Happens to the Blind in Prison?

Braille MonitorMay-June 1986
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What Happens to the Blind in Prison?
by Loraine Stayer

"For two years," says Thomas MeAvoy,
an inmate at Eastern New York Correctional
Facility, soon to face the parole
board, "I sat on my bed, except to go to
the bathroom." If not for the many
books (talking books) brought to him at
Greenhaven by Charles Piera, a literacy
volunteer and school prison coordinator,
MeAvoy says, he would have gone out of
his mind. MeAvoy is blind, as a result
of an injury he sustained in prison.
Currently he and a dozen or so others
are confined at Napanoch in a unit named
after its inhabitants: SDU, Sensorially
Disabled Unit. The unit contains some
deaf inmates as well.
MeAvoy goes on to complain that, until
recently, he and the other blind inmates
in the unit really had no direction and
no efficient use of the facilities designed
to improve the lot of the blind
in the New York State prison system.
Though the unit had Braillers, Optacons,
and various other modern technology, the
inmates had no directions on how to use
them. They spent their time making
baskets in the prison's sheltered workshop.
The
change came in December of 1985,
when in response to McAvoy's letter to
the National Federation of the Blind, a
correspondence was set up between the
unit and members of the Federation in
New York. The correspondence quickly blossomed into an exchange of information
and the beginnings of a chapter of
the National Federation of the Blind in
the' Unit. To date the chapter is still
unofficial. The members of the unit
have not had much input or cooperation
from the director of the unit, Fred
Hirsch, who is IHB (Industrial Home for
the Blind) trained. The unit does not
have adequate mobility training. There
has not been any real effort to give
Braille skills. Many of the men will be
paroled into a situation where they lack
even the basic housekeeping skills to
live alone. These skills, and many
others so necessary for the blind to
survive and compete in today's society,
could be given to them through the Commission for the Blind of New York State
and, indeed, the Commission promised to
give them to prisoners within eighteen
months of release. This, according to
MeAvoy, would apply to just about every
one of the men on the unit. However, to
date, the promise remains just that: a
promise.
At a recent meeting of the unit's
Self-Assessment Profile Rap group another
inmate, Martin Ross, who will return
to Queens when paroled, mentioned that
he was prescribed a cane by a doctor
three years ago, and he is still waiting.
Sam Merchant, who is awaiting
surgery for cataracts, comments that he
would never use a guide dog, because he
would be "ashamed to be seen on the
streets" with one.
MeAvoy, who comes before the parole
board in March of 1986, has vowed that
he will "never make another basket." He
hopes to enter New York College and
train for the Law. There is a lot of
activity at the SDU at Napanoch now that
the men have discovered the existence of
the Federation, as well as certain agencies
for the blind. There could be a
lot more if we could awaken the people
in the prison system and those in charge
at the Commission for the Blind.
There is a tendency for those on the
outside to close their eyes to the prison
system and pretend it doesn't exist.
But to the men and /or women incarcerated
within the problem doesn't go away. And
as for the rest of us, we have to care.
If our brothers and sisters are locked
up with nothing to do, it reflects on
the rest of us. And it involves the
rest of us. The men on the SDU are
there for relatively minor offenses,
some having to do with nonpayment of
child support. They are us, and we are
them, to put it plainly. The only difference
is that we can leave our beds
for more than our bodily functions.
So the answer to the question "What
happens to the blind in prison?" is up
to us.(back)(contents)(next)