“Want to see the condition of a society, walk inside its prisons.”
— Nelson Mandela
The call came from inside Folsom State Prison. Miguel Rivera — a man I had been incarcerated with — was on the line, and I could hear something in his voice I had never heard before: fear. A dental provider had just told him that CDCR does not cover root canals and that the only option was to pull his tooth. He was calling to ask if that was true.
It is not true. California’s Title 15 regulations and the Health Care Department Operations Manual both explicitly state that a restorable anterior tooth is eligible for endodontic treatment. I pulled up the codes and read them to him, one by one, so he would know exactly what to demand and from whom. We documented everything together. The right exists in writing. What Miguel was being told — by a state-employed provider, in a state prison — was false.
The gap between what the policy dictates and what a prisoner is told is not an oversight. It is a feature of a system designed to break the people inside it. I know this because I lived it.
In July 2014, I caused a DUI accident that killed someone. While incarcerated at North Kern State Prison, I developed a severe strep infection. Over four weeks, as my throat swelled nearly shut, I went to the medical unit three times. Each time, a nurse sent me back with the same instruction: drink more water. It was not until a doctor happened to walk past me on that third visit — and I managed to stop him — that the infection was acknowledged and treated. Without that accident of timing, I would have continued to deteriorate.
Medical neglect is one layer of the problem. The grievance system designed to address it is another.
In early 2015, while held at Santa Clara County Jail working as a trustee, an officer named Garvin handed me ten complaint forms filled out by inmates. Every one described mistreatment by the same guard: Officer Jareh Lubrin. Garvin told me to walk the complaints directly to the sergeant during her evening rounds. He did not tell me this was against protocol. I did what I was told.
The sergeant ignored every complaint against Lubrin and reprimanded me for handing them to her directly. The next morning, February 3rd, Garvin woke me before 7:00 a.m. to tell me I had “dropped his name.” He made me repeat back to him that he had never given me any instruction. That afternoon, he pulled me out of my cell and walked me to the chemical closet. He told me to apologize to the sergeant and warned that if I did not, she might come “tear your shit up” — jail language for a shakedown. He told me to “never pull some shit like this again.”
I was documenting everything. I wrote it down on yellow legal paper the same day it happened, with times and names. I still have those pages.
Then Lubrin came to my cell. He already knew what I had submitted. On February 12th, in front of another inmate, he remarked that I might not remain a trustee much longer — “which would be sad, wouldn’t it.” The remark was casual. It was also a threat, and everyone in the room understood it as one.
I was not being paranoid. I was doing an accurate threat assessment.
Out of fear that my cell would be searched and evidence planted, I mailed those handwritten pages to my parents. Knowing that jail calls were recorded by the state, I phoned home and described the threats deliberately on the line — creating an audio record the institution itself would have to preserve. When my father visited, I gave him one instruction: if I was suddenly moved to a different dorm and he could not reach me, call my lawyer.
Six months later, on August 26, 2015, Lubrin and two other guards — Matthew Farris and Rafael Rodriguez — entered the cell of Michael Tyree, a mentally ill inmate being held while awaiting a bed at a mental health facility. They beat him to death with batons. A former acquaintance of Lubrin later testified that Lubrin had told him: “beating people up is part of my job at the jail.” In 2017, a jury convicted all three of second-degree murder and sentenced them to fifteen years to life. In 2022, an appellate court overturned those convictions following a change in state murder law. In August 2024, all three pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and were sentenced to eleven years, with credit for time already served.
The ten grievances against Lubrin had gone nowhere.
This is not a story about a few bad actors. California’s prison medical system has been under federal receivership since 2006, following a class-action lawsuit that found the level of care was causing one preventable death per week. Nearly two decades later, oversight reports continue to document delays in specialty care, inadequate chronic disease management, and a grievance process that functions more as a liability filter than a remedy. The state spends billions annually on corrections. The people inside it are still being told, falsely, what their rights are not.
Miguel Rivera’s tooth is a small thing. It is also not a small thing. The gap it will leave — if he cannot afford to fight, or is not willing to risk what fighting costs — will follow him into every job interview, every first impression, every moment he is trying to convince someone he is more than where he has been. The system does not just punish people while they are inside. It builds the punishment into their bodies so it travels with them.
Michael Tyree had a right to live. Miguel Rivera has a right to receive a root canal. And I had the right to not live in fear that the guards would hurt me or attempt to add more time to my period of incarceration. What connects us is not our crimes, or our diagnoses, or the decisions that brought us inside. What connects us is the system that decided that none of us are worth the paperwork.
Casey Olson is a J.D. graduate of the University of San Francisco School of Law, a former CDCR inmate (#AX1236), and an incoming post-bar law clerk at the San Diego County Public Defender’s Office. He is currently preparing for an evidentiary hearing on a petition for certificate of rehabilitation in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
