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 It’s a story Gov. Jennifer      
 Granholm and the Michigan  
 Department of Corrections 
 would like to go away, but it  
 won’t. Nor should it.

  Theresa Vaughn, the mother of  
 Timothy Joe Souders, told me  
 today that 60 Minutes would 
 broadcast another segment on  
 her son’s death, inside a state  
 prison  in Jackson, on WE tv on  
 Wednesday, Dec. 2, at 8 p.m. and
 11 p.m. Souders, as I reported in 
 August 2006, died from heat and 
 thirst, after spending most of his 
 last four days strapped down in a
 hot isolation cell, naked and   
 soaked in his own urine.

 His mother found out how he 
 died by reading my story in the
 Free Press. A few months later,
 his death was the subject of a
 "60 Minutes"  edition. 

 The state eventually settled a 
 federal lawsuit in the case for 
  $3.25 million.  

 Souders’ case was the worst I  
 saw in a year of reporting on   
 prison health care in Michigan.  

 A 21-year-old mentally ill inmate 
  serving 1-4 years for petty theft 
  and resisting arrest, Souders  
  shouldn’t have been in prison. It 
  turned into a barbaric death   
  sentence.       

  Vaughn, a former factory   
 worker, has become an activist, 
 working with, and contributing  
 to, prisoner  advocacy groups 
 like Prison Legal Services of  
 Michigan, the American Friends  
 Service Committee and  
 Humanity  for Prisoners. She
 plans to testify  Thursday in 
 Lansing before a House 
 subcommittee on mental health. 

 Souders’ death helped change 
 the system — but how much? 

 The state conducted an 
 independent review and 
 eventually fired its medical 
 services provider, CMS. It 
 created a new health care 
 administrator position and   
 revamped the system that  
 provides health care to  
 Michigan’s nearly 50,000
 inmates.

 Still, Vaughn, who hears   
 frequently from the relatives of 
 prisoners about health care   
 abuses, as do I, says little has  
 changed.

 “It’s just kept quieter,’’ she 
 told  me. “They’ve closed 
 Jackson and the federal monitor  
 is not there. As long as(Michigan 
 Department of Corrections  
 Director) Patricia Caruso is in  
 charge, I don’t think it will move 
  in a forward direction.’’  

 Prisons are a semi-secret world, 
 ruled by a sometimes unyielding  
 bureaucracy. No one knows the  
 whole truth. At the very least,  
 troubling questions remain about 
 the quality of health care and 
 mental health care in Michigan’s 
 36 prisons. The system still  
 needs independent oversight. If 
 you’ve forgotten how bad things 
 can get, watch the 60 Minutes  
 broadcast next month, on the 
 " WE " Network.  

 "60 Minutes 
  on WE" 

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