Poor health conditions, indifference and retaliations against inmates and whistleblowers are some of the accusations being raised against the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility. State lawmakers today held a hearing concerning the conditions at the only women’s prison in Michigan.
Complaints about conditions at the facility in Pittsfield Township have been reported for years.
Democratic State Representative Laurie Pohutsky of Livonia addressed the House Oversight Committee on the prison’s problems. She says inmate complaints are being dismissed or ignored due to their incarceration.
“They have lives that expand far beyond the walls in which they are imprisoned with families who love and, in some cases, mourn them. If the human cost here is not enough, there is added financial cost associated with these failures.”
Pohutsky says numerous lawsuits over negligence, abuse and inhuman conditions have cost Michigan taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. She says it’s the duty of state lawmakers to address the deficiencies.
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