When is enough enough?

I’m going to give Paul Egan, our hero at the Detroit Free Press, the podium on this one. I’m speechless. 

LANSING — A man died after falling from an elevated platform at a Jackson-area prison April 12 in what was the fifth similar falling or jumping death since 2020 at two state prisons. 

Ervin Robinson II, 42, was an inmate at the Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center, where prisoners are normally sent for a few weeks or months after they are sentenced and before they are assigned to another state prison to serve their time. 

Jenni Riehle, a spokeswoman for Michigan Department of Corrections Director Heidi Washington, confirmed Robinson's death April 15 and described it as resulting from a fall from an upper gallery. 

Since 2020, Robinson and four other men have died after plunging from heights at either Egeler or a second Jackson-area prison, Parnall Correctional Facility. Each prison has a similar tiered structure with four levels of cells that are accessed by walkways protected by railings that are 38 inches high, which is lower than Michigan workplace safety standards.

 What, if anything, has been done about this situation? Here’s the Freep summary: 

In August 2023, a prison employee complained to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's office that gallery railings at the two prisons were too low, putting workers at risk of falling or being pushed to their deaths several floors below, records the Free Press obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act show. 

Whitmer's office referred the complaint, which also cited concerns about prisoner safety, to the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But nothing changed. 

"No hazard exists," a Michigan Department of Corrections official said in a Sept. 20, 2023, letter to a manager at MIOSHA. The agency closed its investigation less than three weeks later, without physically inspecting the two prisons, despite concerns raised by one MIOSHA official that improvements were needed, records show. 

Since then, three men have died by jumping or falling over or under the railings. 

MIOSHA standards call for railings that are 42 inches high, plus or minus 3 inches, meaning the railings are 1 inch lower than the minimum standard. 

But MIOSHA said the railings could be "grandfathered" in due to the age of the prisons, records show. 

No need to share your thoughts and reactions to HFP. Feel free, instead, to contact Freep writer Paul Egan at 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. And don’t stop there. Share this with your state legislator, along with your indignation.

 

 

 

 

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