This is something that has been obvious for quite some time now, but you really can’t get much more in-your-face on the question than with this latest piece written by Richard A. Webster, a former investigative reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune who publishes one “expose'” after another about how terribly Louisiana treats inmates in its prisons.

As if people didn’t know Louisiana treats its prison inmates badly. Louisiana has always treated its prison inmates badly, because so many of them are such horrific human beings and bad treatment is a necessity for the survival of the guards.

Nobody really cares about the poor treatment of Louisiana’s prisoners, you know. John Bel Edwards was in office for eight years and he did virtually nothing to improve the accommodations in the state’s correctional facilities. Edwards simply let the crooks out of the jails at a faster rate, which amazingly corresponded with a spike in the crime rate.

In any event, Webster’s ProPublica piece, which is being shared all over Twitter now by the state’s left-wing whiners who are exorcised over the recently-passed Gov. Jeff Landry anti-crime agenda, is an agonizingly long sob story about an Angola inmate named Kentrell Parker, who is a 45-year-old quadriplegic due to a neck injury suffered in a prison football game several years ago.

Janice Parker walked into the medical ward at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola several years back, looking for her son, Kentrell Parker.

He should have been easy to find. The 45-year-old New Orleans native had been bedridden since an injury in a prison football game left him paralyzed from the neck down more than a decade earlier. His bed was usually positioned near a window by the nurses’ station.

When she didn’t see him there, Janice Parker feared the worst. Her son is completely dependent on staff to keep him alive: to feed him, clean him after bowel movements, change his catheter and prevent him from choking. Because he struggles to clear his throat, even a little mucus can be life-threatening.

A nurse pointed toward a door that was ajar. Janice Parker’s son was alive, but she was disturbed by what she saw: He was alone in a dark, grimy room slightly larger than a bathroom, with no medical staff or orderlies nearby. He was there, he told his mother in a raspy voice, because a nurse had written him up for complaining about his care. This was his punishment — the medical ward’s version of solitary confinement. He told her he had been in the room for days, Janice Parker said during a recent interview. “There was no one at his bedside. And he can’t holler for help if needed,” she said.

For years, Janice Parker said, she has complained to nurses and prison officials — in person, over the phone and through an attorney — about the neglect that she has witnessed on her frequent visits and that her son has described. He has told her that he’s gone days without food. He has developed urinary tract infections because his catheter hasn’t been changed. At one point, Janice Parker said, he developed bedsores on his back because nurses hadn’t shifted his body every few hours.

Her complaints have gone nowhere, she said. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said.

Yep. It’s terrible. One really feels for Ms. Parker and her efforts to stand up for her son.

Of course, there are lots of senior citizens who didn’t actually kill anybody like Kentrell Parker did who have trouble finding quality assisted-living care, too. They also get bedsores.

Richard A. Webster doesn’t write much about those folks, we notice.

The piece is an attack on Landry for wanting to lock criminals up longer, warning that to do so will cause more medical expenses the state will have to meet and the state’s medical care for inmates is already, Webster says, sub-standard.

But why is it sub-standard? Didn’t Louisiana have a Democrat governor for the last eight years? How come John Bel Edwards didn’t  solve this problem?

We’re not sure, but this is definitely Jeff Landry’s fault…

All told, the bills Landry signed seem designed to ensure that “everyone will die in prison,” said Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voice of the Experienced, a New Orleans nonprofit that advocates for the rights of the incarcerated.

“More and more sentences of 30 to 60 years, which are not uncommon, will be death sentences,” he said. “And we do not all age gracefully or go quietly in our sleep.”

Gosh, we wonder what you have to do to get a sentence of 30 to 60 years in Louisiana. Anybody know?

Well, how about this? Let’s look into Kentrell Parker. What did he do to get stuck in Angola?

Webster doesn’t spend a lot of time telling us. All he says is it was a second-degree murder rap that the “jury found Parker guilty for,” owing to the death by unnatural causes of Parker’s girlfriend at the time. He was sentenced to life without parole.

And Webster does provide a link to the Justia.com page for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision in Parker’s appellate case (not surprisingly, the court upheld Parker’s conviction). He doesn’t draw anything from that link, though, because the more you know about why Parker is laying in his own filth in Angola the less sympathetic you are toward him.

Here’s the story of why Parker is in prison…

Ms. Adrienne Bernard, the victim’s mother, testified that her daughter had four children, ranging in age from two to ten years old. Ms. Bernard denied that her daughter kept guns in her house and that she used or sold drugs. Ms. Bernard further stated that her daughter supported her children through various jobs.

Officer Bruce Cranstoun testified that on March 15, 1999, at approximately 3:30 p.m., a woman flagged him down as he drove on Martin Luther King Blvd., and told him there had been a shooting in apartment 4-C of the Melpomene Housing Development. As he approached the apartment building, he saw several people and three children standing outside the entrance. He entered the apartment, and found a woman’s body on the floor. He checked for vital signs, notified the police dispatcher of the homicide, and then checked to be sure that no one else was in the apartment. Thereafter, he secured the scene, and awaited the arrival of the coroner and homicide detectives.

Dr. James Traylor, who testified as an expert in forensic pathology, performed the autopsy on the victim’s body on March 16, 1999. He opined that a “single perforating tight contact gunshot wound to the left neck” killed the victim. He explained that because the victim suffered a “perforating”, or through and through wound, no bullet was recovered from the victim’s body.Dr. Traylor classified the wound as “tight contact” because he detected a gun muzzle imprint on the victim’s neck.

Officer Terrie Clark, an NOPD 911 operator, testified that all 911 calls are recorded and that she received the defendant’s call reporting the shooting at 9:09 a.m. on March 15, 1999. The defendant identified himself by name, and told her that his girlfriend had been shot by two men he saw running from the apartment. The defendant gave her an incorrect address as the scene of the shooting.

The tape recording of the 911 call was played for the jury. In the call the defendant identified himself, and told the operator that he found his girlfriend, shot in the neck, at her apartment. He further stated that he saw two men running from the apartment through the project. NOPD homicide detective John Deshotel investigated the murder of Kawana Bernard at 2339 Martin Luther King Blvd., apartment 4C. The apartment door was partially open and the victim’s body was on the floor near the front door. The body displayed a left head wound with an exit wound at the back of the head. He canvassed the area, and found a spent 9mm-bullet casing on the floor, which had entered and exited the VCR unit, across the room from where the body lay. Detective Deshotel noticed that the phone was unplugged, and found fifteen small bags of marijuana in the bedroom. Derielle and Kevielle Bernard, two of the victim’s children, told him “Trell” lived with them and their mother. The children identified the defendant as Trell from a police photograph, and told Detective Deshotel that their mother, Trell, and Trell’s friend Frederick Jones were alone in the apartment that morning when the children left for school. The day after the shooting, the defendant turned himself in at central lock up. Detective Deshotel arrested him, and advised him he need not make any statement. Subsequently, Detective Deshotel executed a search warrant at the defendant’s mother’s residence and confiscated a black and gray FUBU jacket containing blood smears on the right sleeve. Further investigation revealed that .25 caliber automatic and 9-mm semi-automatic weapons were fired from the apartment balcony during the argument between the victim and the defendant; however, neither of these weapons was ever found. Officer Kenneth Leary, Jr., expert firearms examiner, testified that he inspected a 9-mm bullet and casing retrieved from the crime scene and concluded that both pieces were components of 9-mm ammunition.

Kevielle Bernard, the victim’s seven-year-old daughter, identified the defendant in court as Trell, and said that he lived with them in the Melpomene Housing complex. She testified that her mother did not like guns, and did not own any. However, Trell kept two guns in the house – one on the shelf in the living room and the other in her mother’s bedroom drawer. Her mother argued with Trell, and wanted him to get the guns out of the house.

Frederick Jones testified that he had been staying with the victim and defendant at the victim’s apartment for a few nights prior to the shooting. On the morning of the shooting, he was asleep on the sofa in the living room and awoke to the sound of the defendant packing his belongings. The three were alone in the apartment because the victim’s children had gone to school. The defendant and the victim began to argue, then began pushing and shoving each other. The victim attempted to leave the apartment but the defendant brought her back. When the pair was outside the apartment, Jones heard the victim tell the defendant: “That boy see you with the gun at my head.” When the pair came back into the apartment, Jones noticed that the defendant was holding a gun. Jones tried to calm the situation, telling the defendant to put the gun away. The defendant put the gun in his jacket. The victim and defendant were arguing in the living room about the defendant’s moving out of the apartment, and taking his clothes with him. The victim refused to allow the defendant to leave with any clothes she had bought for him, so as he packed his possessions, she began removing items she said she had purchased. Shortly thereafter, Jones heard a gunshot and looked up to see Trell on the floor saying he was sorry, and the victim falling to the floor. Jones saw blood, grabbed his jacket and ran out of the apartment. The defendant left right after Jones, and caught up with him. The defendant asked Jones to accompany him to his mother’s house. Jones complied because he feared the defendant would shoot him if he refused. When the defendant came out of his mother’s house, his aunt came with him. The trio went back to the project and the defendant alone went back and forth to the victim’s apartment three or four times. After his first trip back into the apartment, which was about ten or fifteen minutes after the shooting, the defendant told Jones that the victim was still breathing. The defendant used a pay phone across from the project to make the 911 call. Jones stated that prior to the shooting the phone in the apartment worked because he made a call from that phone prior to the shooting.

After making the 911 call, the defendant headed back to the project but upon seeing the police arrive, he and his aunt left in his aunt’s car. Jones called his mother and reported what he had seen, and asked her to call the police. Jones denied ever buying drugs from the victim or seeing the victim use or sell drugs. He knew Trell kept two guns in the apartment. Prior to shooting the victim, Jones heard Trell fire one of the guns on the front porch. Jones admitted that he had two prior narcotics convictions.

Derielle Bernard, the victim’s nine-year-old daughter, testified that she, her sister, Kevielle, her mother and Trell lived at 2339 Martin Luther King Blvd., apartment 4C on March 15, 1999. She and her little sister found their mother’s body that afternoon when they returned from school. Derielle knocked on the door and when she did not hear her mother coming to open the door, she tried to open it. The door opened only slightly because her mother’s feet were blocking the opening. She squeezed through the doorway, and got on the floor to check her mother’s heart. She ran to the phone, but someone had unplugged it, and removed the connecting wire. She then ran to a neighboring apartment to ask for help to call the police.

Derielle said that her mother did not own or keep a gun in the apartment but that the defendant had two guns at their apartment. Whenever he left the apartment, he took the guns with him.

So Kentrell Parker was – almost certainly – a two-bit drug dealer who responded to his girlfriend complaining about his treatment of her by putting a pistol against her neck and blowing her brains out.

And leaving her for her two children to find.

And you’re supposed to become very enthusiastic about saving Kentrell Parker from his prison sentence – which by the way won’t be affected at all by any of the bills passed in the legislative session on crime – being unpleasant at Jeff Landry’s hands.

Yes, you read that correctly. Nothing about Parker’s living conditions has anything to do with the agenda the Legislature passed back in February. He’s just the poster child for how rough the inmates at Angola have it, according to the “investigative reporter” from far-left ProPublica who neglects to tell you much about why Parker’s in prison in the first place.

What’s so irritating about this is that Kentrell Parker ought to be a poster child for why people need to reject the drug-dealer/gangbanger lifestyle that served him so poorly, not the poster child for how mean Jeff Landry is to black guys at Angola. There was one person, and one person only, whose actions could have saved Parker from his current plight. That person was…Kentrell Parker.

None of these leftist ghouls who desperately want you to believe they’re the defenders of the downtrodden taking up for the rights and plights of these poor souls in the prisons and elsewhere ever bother to offer the most simple, true analysis.

Which is this: don’t live your life like Kentrell Parker did. It doesn’t lead anywhere good. It isn’t productive. You won’t get a reward out of it. You’ll become a real slimeball nobody cares about, and if something happens to you like you break your neck in a prison football game, you end up with bedsores as you lie for hours in your own poop because nobody cares enough to attend to you.

That’s the real lesson Kentrell Parker teaches us. Because regardless of Richard A. Webster’s advanced sensibilities, Kentrell Parker is almost literally the last person in Louisiana that society wants to expend resources to take care of.

So we don’t.

And no matter how much Richard A. Webster and ProPublica want to make a scandal out of it, it isn’t one.

Don’t be Kentrell Parker. You don’t want to be stuck with Richard A. Webster and his furiously-clicking laptop keyboard as your only advocate.