Ep. 93 – Do Prisoners Deserve Compassion in Death? What One Man Saw, Will Change You

TRANSCRIPT

Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele.

Gissele: We believe that loving compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking about dignity and humanity within the prison system. And our guest is Fernando Murillo. Fernando Murillo is program manager for the palliative care initiative at the Humane Prison Hospice Project, where he trains incarcerated people to provide hospice and palliative care.

Gissele: for aging and dying peers. During his 24 years of incarceration, Fernando served as a pastoral care support worker in California’s only licensed prison hospice, and received end of life training from USC and uc Davis. He previously contributed to projects in California, Washington, and Norway focused on transforming prison culture and improving quality of life for both incarcerated [00:01:00] residents and correctional staff.

Gissele: Please join me in welcoming Fernando. Hi Fernando.

Fernando: Hello. Thank you for welcoming me. There’s not too many places on this planet that I’m welcoming, but thank you.

Gissele: Absolutely. I heard your story through a colleague of mine and I was really excited to talk to you. ‘Cause one of the things we focus on this podcast about is sharing compassionate and caring stories.

Gissele: I was wondering if you could share with the audience your own journey through incarceration and how that led you to become a leader in prison, hospice, and palliative care.

Fernando: Wow, that’s such a loaded question. Wow. So I spent approximately 24 years in prison.

Fernando: So my first 19 years I spent in some of the most harshest environments that the California prison system has to offer. These places are classified. One through four. Four being the highest level low, one being the lowest. I spent approximately 19 years in the highest levels of level four.

Fernando: Level fours have restricted movement, [00:02:00] limited amount of programming, limited access to family, and these prisons are typically located in some of the most rural areas in California. And just for context for folks listening when it comes to geography California is I believe the third largest state in the United States of America and area first in population with four approximately 40 million people.

Fernando: So when I say rural locations, they could be anywhere between 700 to four to 300 miles from location, or place of origin. I’m from the Bay Area in California. I’m living in San Francisco now, and it would be very difficult for not just my family, but. Other family members that would be traveling to visit their family members.

Fernando: So just a little context about like area and topography and distance. So yeah, spending the majority of my time in these locations, there was a limited access to anything that would help improve myself as a human being. So I would do a lot of self-learning self-educating [00:03:00] on this journey. And they were very perilous and difficult violent environments.

Fernando: So I, I spent from the age of 16 all the way till the age of 35 in these environments at the age of 35, I was lucky enough to be allowed to get transferred to a place called the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, which is located between the Bay Area and California and Sacramento. So it’s located in city centers and near coastal and valley communities.

Fernando: Not only did this transfer enable me to have access to my family that could come and visit me but it enabled me to have access to e