Finding what happened to person in prison
September 20, 2017 6:34 PM   Subscribe

Asking for a friend: I need some help navigating the prison system. I have a cousin who is in federal prison in West Virginia. He was taken out to have surgery, and we have not heard from him in about a month or so.

I've tried calling the prison several times and have sent an email, but have not heard anything. We're very worried about his health and want to find out what is going to make sure that he is getting appropriate care. However, at this point I'm just hitting walls. Any advice or other help to navigate this system would be very much appreciated! Thank you so much in advance for you help!
posted by cacao to Law & Government (5 answers total)
 
The U.S. Marshals Service is responsible for the transportation of inmates to and from medical facilities. I would try reaching out to the appropriate field office. I'm not sure which district your cousin is located in, so here is the contact info for the Northern and Southern field offices:

Northern District of West Virginia (N/WV)
U.S. Marshal: Gary M. Gaskins
U.S. Courthouse
500 W. Pike Street
P.O. Box 2807
Clarksburg, WV 26302
(304) 623-0486

Southern District of West Virginia (S/WV)
U.S. Marshal: John D. Foster
300 Virginia Street East, Suite 3602
Charleston, WV 25301
(304) 347-5136
posted by sevensnowflakes at 6:49 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Cacao, I may be able to help you. I'm a pastor and one of my parishioners is in the federal prison system in West Virginia. I'm going up there soon to see him and may be able to check on your friend's cousin, assuming the person I am going to see knows him. It may be a long-shot, but maybe we can make it work. Memail me if I can help.
posted by 4ster at 6:58 PM on September 20, 2017 [32 favorites]


Best answer: Ms. Karaage regularly represents and works with people in federal prison. She has the following to offer:

"Unfortunately your friends' situation is not unique - it's difficult for your friend to get an answer because the federal prison system does not view themselves as having any sort of responsibility to the family members of inmates regarding their health, usually hiding behind the rationale that HIPAA prevents them from releasing any information about the inmate. It will be even harder for you to get a response if you indicate your concern is about whether your cousin is getting "proper care" as that is threatening to the prison.

If your cousin had previously signed a power of attorney and privacy waiver release there's a far stronger chance of getting information about his health status - but in most cases many folks don't have the knowledge that this is necessary, in which case it's really difficult to get any sort of meaningful response.

What I can offer is the following:
If your cousin has passed away, they will notify you. This hasn't occurred, so the silence at least means that, fwiw.

While the official policy of the prison will be "we don't release information on inmates unless they have a waiver in place," an avenue that could potentially work is to have someone on the inmates' approved contact list contact the prison and ask to speak with the prisoner's counselor, and hope that they either slip up or are willing to take pity and level with you to give you some tidbit of information about how your cousin is doing (i.e. he's still in the hospital).

I'd also recommend writing a letter to the warden of the prison to at least get some sort of official response. From there, consider contacting your local representatives and asking that they make an inquiry on your behalf.

If your cousin has some sort of legal representation, the attorney can make inquiries that are also more likely to be responded to.

Outside of the persistence in the earlier two options, you're hitting a wall because the system is designed that way - there is no obligation for them to provide you with information you're seeking. I'm sorry - this is really rough, but outside of these options you may just have to end up waiting on hearing back from your cousin when he returns to the institution.

Last, The US Marshalls service is only involved if the inmate is in pre-trial and not yet convicted, so I disagree with the first comment here. It's far more likely your cousin will be escorted by a Bureau of Prisons employee since he's already a federal inmate, in which case they'll fall under the same HIPAA excuse to not release any information.
posted by Karaage at 7:11 PM on September 20, 2017 [20 favorites]


There's the official answer, and then there's the unofficial answer. There are social workers who work with prison inmates. I would call your local group, and plead your case with them. There may be one who is willing to call and ask about it.
posted by corb at 8:58 PM on September 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Inspired by Ms. Karaage's answer, I think it's definitely worth asking for help from the lawyer who handled your cousin's case (or another lawyer who more recently represented him). Defense attorneys I've known would do what they could to help in this situation, and "I need to speak with my client, where is he?" is reasonable for them to ask. Some might not, but it's worth a shot.

Finding that lawyer: someone in the family may know, but failing that it's public information. You could get the attorney's name from the court docket, either through searching PACER (which is annoying) or hopefully by calling the clerk's office. E.g. here's the clerk's office contact info for the northern district of WV, which might be correct - you'd want the equivalent for the federal district court where the case occurred.

Disability Services of WV also sounds like a great place to ask for advice.
posted by john hadron collider at 5:43 AM on September 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


« Older Tell Me About My Computer   |   Can I eat this? - chicken stock left out for 12... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.