The Marshall Project/Los Angeles Times, 12/12/24: “Steven Backstrom was struggling to stay awake during his shift in the prison shoe factory. The machines could be dangerous if you weren’t paying attention, and he’d only slept about 3 ½ hours.

Activity at the Clements Unit, a state prison in Amarillo, Texas, was always churning. Night after night, doors slammed and people yelled. Sometimes, staff delivered medications at 2 a.m. Many nights officers forced him to come to the front of his cell for a security check. The sleepless nights made him feel like scum had settled over his brain.

But he didn’t have the choice to skip work. The job didn’t pay, and if he didn’t show up, he could be punished.

That morning, he pushed the wrong button on a machine, and the equipment, meant to mold the shape of the shoe, clamped down on Backstrom’s right hand instead. The pain was excruciating. When he lifted his hand, his fingers were so badly mangled, he thought it looked like they were wobbling in the air. Backstrom later described the injuries in a handwritten grievance he sent to prison officials in 2011: stitches and metal pins in his pinky and ring finger.

Backstrom sued the prison system over the accident the following year, blaming the injury on sleep deprivation, but a federal judge dismissed the suit. More than a decade later, Backstrom still cannot close his hand. He still can’t get a decent night’s sleep because relentless interruptions and noise remain a part of the nightly routine at the Clements Unit where he remains incarcerated.”

Read the full article here.