Short-Listed
for Oscar, Film Follows Gentle Death of Ex-POW
By
SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
Dec. 18, 2013
Hospice
workers gently adjust Jack Hall's oxygen tube and lovingly massage his withered
hands, making sure he is not alone as death approaches.
Hall,
an 82-year-old former World War II prisoner of war who is serving a life
sentence for murder, has spent nearly a decade in the infirmary at Iowa State
Penitentiary with a terminal heart ailment. But now, struggling to breathe, he
is in his final weeks.
His
unlikely comforters -- kidnappers and murderers -- are paid nothing for their
hours of care-giving to a growing population of aging inmates. These volunteers
do it willingly, knowing one day they, too, will be old and can look forward to
a gentle end.
"Prison
is cold, but death is colder," says one hospice volunteer. Another says he
benefits as much from the all-volunteer hospice program as those who are dying.
"For me, I'm somebody no one thought I could be."
This
unique program is the subject of a compelling HBO documentary, "Prison
Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall," which was
shortlisted this fall in the short-subject category for an Academy Award. It is
scheduled to air in March.
Chicago-based
director Edgar Barens lived and
worked as both sound man and camera man for six months at Iowa State, one of
the nation's oldest maximum-security prisons, gaining the trust of Hall and his
fellow inmates. With Hall's permission, he captured the profoundly intimate moment
of his death.
"The problem of
prisoners dying is getting worse and worse because we are sentencing people for
so long," Barens, 53, told ABCNews.com. "I wanted to show the urgency
of the situation. It's a huge problem and the states are grappling with it
now."
The
prison population is aging as more than 200,000 elderly inmates are
incarcerated nationwide. Of the 1,800 prisons, 75 have unique hospice programs
and only 20 use prison volunteers, according to the film.
Without
in-prison hospice, these men would be sent off to state hospitals where they
would die shackled to their beds without being allowed even a family visit.
"Apart
from showing compassion, even with murderers and kidnappers, I also wanted to
show that compassionate commutation or medical parole is rarely used," he
said. "Many die and not as peacefully as Jack Hall."
Hospice
not only benefits the dying, but their prisoner caretakers as well.
"Although
these guys did some horrible things, they all, in some way want not to absolve
themselves, but to seek some sort of redemption," said Barens.
Barens
was given unprecedented access to the penitentiary, largely because of a film
he had done on a model program in Louisiana: "Angola Prison Hospice: Opening the Door,"
while working as media projects coordinator for the Center on Crime,
Communities and Culture at the Open Society Institute.
When
he approached Iowa State, they had been using his short film as a training video
to jump start their own hospice program. "I was flabbergasted," he
said. "They gave me carte blanche in a maximum-security prison. … It was a
dream come true."
The
prison gave Barens housing where their doctors live and even provided a full
basement for his production equipment. Barens said he stumbled across Jack
Hall, a curmudgeonly but sympathetic character, who was serving time for
murdering a drug dealer by cutting his throat.
"Jack
had another son who committed suicide because he was strung out on drugs,"
said Barens. "He was out drinking with buddies and overheard one guy brag
how he made money selling drugs to kids. With his mental frame of mind as a
soldier, he thought of the guy as scum and had to kill him."
Hall
says in the film that he had been "trained" to kill in hand-to-hand
combat as an Army Ranger. "And
when he came back from the war, they gave him a carton of Lucky Strikes and
fifty bucks," said Barens. "Jack tumbled into alcohol and was
destroyed by the Army. He was damaged goods."
Iowa
State's 30-year nurse administrator Marilyn Sales told ABCNews.com that the
film "brought tears to my eyes."
She
launched the hospice program in 2006 with a handful of inmate volunteers. At
first, they were resistant to the idea, but soon they "put their heart and
souls into it."
"I
called the cell house and asked them to send over five lifers who were
trustworthy," said Sales, 69, who is now retired. "I knew it wouldn't
work without the inmates. They came over grumbling, then we popped the
["Angola Prison Hospice"] tape in and there were just tears."
When
she asked if they could handle it, three said yes. "For two of them it
struck too close to home," she said. "I
knew that without them, we couldn't have a viable hospice program," said
Sales. "I didn't want it to come from outside the institution."
Hospice
volunteers get a 14-week training course, learning "assistance in daily
living." They work as orderlies in the 12-bed infirmary, change bedding,
providing companionship, delivering food, and feed the ill and injured. Two of
the rooms are reserved for the dying who receive 24/7 personal care and
unlimited access to family. "I
think it's their way of giving back," she said of the volunteers.
The
program is financially self-sufficient with furniture made in the prison
workshop. Local hospitals donated beds and quilts and other bedding provided by
a local church. Lap blankets were knitted by a women's group. The inmates
themselves buy videos for the hospice program.
Dying
men like Jack Hall deserve the dignity of hospice, Sales said.
"Jack
was a cantankerous old coot for years," she said. "Jack was Jack and
couldn't help [but] like him. His reason for a life sentence was very
compelling. He righted what he saw as a wrong."
Hall
spent about six weeks in hospice, the only patient during most of the filming.
Then a second prisoner, a 45-year-old dying from ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease,
was admitted, but he was not part of the documentary because he was unable to
speak.
Sales
answers critics who say those who have committed violent crimes don't deserve
compassion: "We have to be better at caring and compassion for
people," she said. "They are paying the price by being in prison.
They can't choose what they eat, what they wear, when they go to bed and when
they wake up. When the gavel drops, it's a life sentence. It's over." Sales
said hospice should be mandatory in all prisons.
"I
am not the judge and jury," she said. "There but for the grace of God
go I. One bad decision, one stupid mistake and you are there for life. No one
should die alone."
"Prison
Terminal" will have its world premiere at the Irvine International Film
Festival in California. Oscar nominations come out Jan. 16.
Edgar
Barens is currently a media specialist at the Jane Addams College of Social
Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago
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