This month I visited Health Services in MCF Rush City to see a dentist. Instead I was seen by a “dental assistant.” I was informed “there has been no dentist at the facility in three years, but there is a dentist that comes twice a month from another facility and only does extractions.”
It is well established in Estelle v. Gamble and Erickson v Pardus that prisoners are entitled to medical care for serious medical needs. In fact, prisoners are deemed vulnerable adults and have no control over their own daily lives.
The dental assistant gave me a handful of salt packets and a printout of the process on how I should get my tribe to pay for my dental care. I would then need to pay for the transportation to a local dental office.
Needless to say I was utterly shocked. I have been incarcerated for nearly 20 years and with age I require dental care. I have reached out to my tribe to see if I do qualify for Indian Health Service, but I do not qualify per federal regulations as I do not live within my community’s borders. I could get free dental care if Minnesota Dept. of Corrections took me to Morton, Minnesota over 180 miles one way.
I have spoken to other prisoners experiencing similar dental care issues. Some have decaying teeth or abscesses and are in need of urgent care. What if they do not qualify for any government dental care? I do not know where to go from here. Will I have to get teeth pulled when I require a cavity filling?
The dental assistant elaborated how the job posting for a dentist at Rush City states, “Must travel” and that nobody would desire a job that requires extensive traveling. Moreover, why is there even a dental assistant here at Mcf- Rush City when she does nothing but gives out salt packets and a printout of the MN Dept of Corrections policy on outside medical care?
Is this a scam on a massive level, paying a dental assistant a salary to do nothing? It could possibly be deeper than that. The MN Dept. of Corrections is allotted x amount of dollars to provide medical care to prisoners—who is accounting funds since they do not provide constitutionally required medical care?
What is the possible solution for my own conundrum? Get the funds for transportation/dental care costs and get my dental issues taken care of. Then file a federal 1983 lawsuit and recover my costs on the back end?
If the MCF Rush City dentist is essentially nonexistent, would the Minnesota Dept. of Corrections consider a possible transfer program where they transfer a prisoner to another prison for dental appointment, then return them back to prison next transferring day?
Perhaps I could request a transfer to another prison for my dental needs. It is clear there is something terribly wrong with this picture. Am I somehow stuck in the Twilight Zone at Rush City?
Keith Crow is an inmate at Rush City Prison.
Perspectives from Within features concerns from inmates in partnership with the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a union of prisoners, ex-prisoners, families, and communities working to transform the justice system in MN.
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