Bad Medicine

“It is outrageous enough that Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back. In recovery he was handcuffed to his hospital bed, adding to the violence inflicted on him. In the days after yet another unjustifiable, ragingly violent police attack on a Black man, his family say his treatment includes being held in “chains.” Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers is reported to have said, “It seems to be bad medicine.”

Bad medicine indeed. Bad nursing, bad care. Not care. Health care providers who participate in the ill treatment of prisoners, by standing by, complying, continuing on with their clinical routines in the context of carceral force, are abdicating their professional responsibilities. 

This is not a horrific practice unique to Wisconsin, or the United States. This happens in Canadian hospitals too. Four years ago, we protested the shackling of Fliss Cramman while she recovered from major abdominal surgery at the General Hospital in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The mother of four was facing deportation over a technicality. At the time, the province’s then Minister of Justice Diana Whalen said, “It sounded like we had gone a little too far.”

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