Judith Lessler, “Department of Corruption”

Our guest speaker is Judith Lessler, who edited the book “Department of Corruption: Darren Rainey, the Untold Story” (Harold W.J. Hempstead, author).

You may think you know what happens to people who are incarcerated in our prison systems, but you need to know what happened to Darren Rainey, who was imprisoned by the State of Florida.   Here’s an excerpt from the writeup on Amazon:

“In this historically factual book, Harold Hempstead chronicles: • Facts about the Darren Rainey case that have never been told to the public and about his work to expose the brutal and fatal scalding of Darren Rainey to the Miami Herald newspaper, • The murdering, starving, torturing, and abusing of Florida inmates by prison staff, • The poisoning of the food that inmates eat with pills, chemicals, feces, and urine by the Florida prison staff, • The extreme physically and sexually violent conditions in the Florida Department of Corrections, • The rise of gang membership and violence in Florida prisons, • Drugs, cellular phones, and other contraband smuggling activities, as well as, • Numerous facts about the culture of corruption and the unconstitutional conditions of the Florida Department of Corrections.  Hempstead also describes his personal journey and how his Christian faith has sustained him throughout his nearly 20 years in prison.”

Also note that the new book, “Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead, is a fictional piece but is based on actual facts behind a correctional facility for young offenders in Florida back in the 1950s and 1960s.  Ms. Lessler will not speak about this book, but the book illustrates our problems in correctional facilities over time.  We can’t fix them if we don’t know how badly they are broken.