By C1 Staff
JACKSON, Mich. — Coinciding with the opening of the Cell Block 7 Prison Museum, a few former employees and an inmate offered up their stories of what life was like inside the facility.
MLive interviewed former corrections officer Don Brown, who is a twenty year veteran of the DOC, who was forced into retirement when surgeries left him unable to do the job.
“I had surgery on my neck, one of many surgeries, and the doctor wouldn’t clear me to go back to work. He said I was one bad move from being paralyzed.”
Starting in the prison industry at age 28, Brown did stints at the Parnall Correctional Facility and the Macomb Correctional Facility.
He says he saw everything.
“I walked into the finale of an inmate who decided to jump off fourth gallery, which he did,” Brown recalled. “He ended up with a very serious concussion and fractured both hips.
“I always said, ‘Prisoners don’t die.’”
He recounted the story of one inmate who was a close family friend and how the man’s suicide still haunts him. It had been Brown’s call to put the man on suicide watch.
“I did not want to degrade him; suicide watch means you get stripped down of all the clothes and put in, what we called, a ‘Bam Bam suit’ because it looked like something out of the Flintstones.’
“It’s real thick material and it slips over the head and there are slits for the arms and then you get a bed of the same material … I couldn’t do that to him. It was just wrong.”
The next day Brown informed the man’s family of his death.
“It’s something that always gnawed at me, whether I should have [put him on suicide watch]. But he would have done it eventually anyway.”
Eventually Brown found himself drinking so heavily after work that he would still be hung over at the start of his shift the next day.
“It affected how I could deal with the inmates,” he said. “And that’s when I stopped.”
He advised younger officers to not mistreat the inmates, but to be upfront and fair.
“I’d tell them, ‘You’re going to get what you give.’ If you want to be an [expletive], well, then those inmates are going to be [expletive] back to you.”
However, he doesn’t harbor any regrets. He takes pride in the example he showed for younger officers.
“I got a feeling that I was making a hair’s bit of difference.”