Lawmakers Hold Hearings on Conditions Inside Women's Prison

0:00Glad you're here, and these are the very things I was mentioning much earlier. Now, President to Donald Trump has said, I didn't hear it because I can't have the sound on on my monitor that was carrying his conversations with the Germany, the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. But now he is saying he, our President, is saying that the United States will cut off all trade with Spain after the European country refused to let the US military use its bases for missions linked to strikes on Iran. Well, it's a socialist government. I don't know if this is one of the places where he said he had a beautiful relationship or not, but he's got to understand that there's going to be reactions like that, obviously from the socialist leadership of the variety of the countries. Well, just follow it along the way. Tonight a special program, a special edition of Spotlight with Marie Osborne focusing on

1:03Iran. That's at eight o'clock. I do hope you won't miss it. Meanwhile, Marie is here. Whoops, I don't have her. Let me just do something very quickly. A shame on me for reading all these other things that are coming through here. As you can imagine, while we're at war, there's a lot of stuff happening and a lot of information is flying and I turned off of where it was. Okay. Michigan lawmakers from both parties are demanding changes at Michigan's only prison for women after hearing emotional testimony about conditions inside the Huron Valley Facility near Psylanti. W.J. Harris, Marie Osborne says Michigan's women's prisons have a long history of problems. In fact, she outlined these problems more than 25 years ago in two award-winning series here on WJR. And I'm led to believe that after your work, Marie, over these past over 25 years, things

2:07got better, but they're still not apparently good enough. Marie, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Well, things did change after our reporting 25 years ago, but what I'm about to tell you is going to tell you that things haven't really changed that much. This peaked my interest last week when I saw this. During legislative hearing and lancing, former staff members and oversight officials described long-standing problems at the Huron Valley Facility. This included mold throughout living areas, easy access to drugs, poor medical care, cases of women who died while in custody. And witnesses said employees who tried to raise concerns, well, they often faced pushback and some staff are suspected of helping bring contraband into the prison. Lots of problems. The members of the House Oversight Committee said the issues point to failures that should have been addressed years ago. They argued the state is paying out large legal settlements while these underlying problems continue. Now, the state corrections leaders, they pushed back saying Michigan provides nationally

3:09recognized programs and medical care, and the efforts are underway to limit contraband and improve safety. So right now, it's still in this oversight committee area where they're going to look into some of these allegations that were made. But Paul, as you said in your lead 25 years ago, we reported on similar problems, but far more serious problems as well in the Michigan women's prisons. We did two series. One was called Guardians of Fear and the other one who's guarding the guards. And we uncovered abuse among the guards who, and at that time, there were allegations that they were raping prisoners. And then while I was reporting on that, I had female guards come and tell me, confidentially, that they, too, were being raped by male guards inside the women's prison system. So we did at least two dozen, three dozen reports on this at the time.

4:14And we did see some changes happen inside the prisons, but at the time, also, there was a really big problem with retaliation within the prison system. So some of that has changed, but the fact of the matter is here we are back hearing about these types, similar problems, again, inside the prison system, the female prison system. So disheartening, given that 25 years ago, you didn't just do a couple of quiet reports, Guardians of Fear and who's guarding the guards. These were big deals, both one national Edward R. Marrow awards. And in addition, the series on the guards won a national headliner award, both series won multiple Michigan Association of Broadcasters, Associated Press, and Women in Communications Awards. So these got a lot of attention. And yet you're telling me, 25 years later, some of those systemic problems still exist and frankly flourish now.

5:15Yeah. And probably the most egregious here that I'm thinking about and looking about in this latest testimony that occurred was this easy access to drugs. And there shouldn't be drugs, obviously, in prison. And also the contraband that's coming into the prison. So these things have got to be addressed and looked at. You know, at the time when we did the original reporting, we found that the people running the prisons just didn't really want to talk about it. You know, the book stock stopped at the governor's desk. And the governor really didn't want to answer a lot of these questions. The head of the prison system at the time. He did come on WJR, but he would not talk to me. So he came on, in fact, Paul, he spoke with you on your show talking about the morning show, talking about the allegations. It just so happened that he chose to come on the radio station when I was on vacation

6:17with my family, my kids who were a little at the time. And so that he chose that week to come to answer some of these complaints. So we always thought that was an interesting bit of timing there. Fascinating. I honestly don't remember it, but fascinating for sure. And it is a very big issue. You know, when you get quotes like we treat animals better than we have treated these individuals and things like that, we're not helping these people in prison. We're not rehabilitating them. We're making them worse, like has happened with a lot of prisons. And I appreciate the fact that 25 years later, you're still on top of this. We're looking forward to your special spotlight tonight at 8 o'clock, focusing on Iran, Marie. We appreciate that hard work. As you continue as WJR's director of community affairs and news, have a great show tonight. We will. And we're just trying to stay on top of that story that you know is ever changing.

7:19Ever changing indeed. And by tonight, there'll be a lot more information out there and we'll have it for you. Right here on NewsTalk 760, WJR, the great voice of the Great Lakes. Stay with us.