Samantha 'Sunshine' Rave: A daughter’s call to reform a deadly system

My name is Sunshine, and my father, Gary William Miller, died in February 2011 inside Alle­gheny County Jail.

To this day, I still don’t know exactly how or why. No clear explanation. No compassion. No closure. Just silence. Just death. Just another addict written off by a system that punishes struggle instead of protecting life.

Yes, he was an addict — but he was also my father. He was kind. He was supportive. He was human. That humanity didn’t disappear because of addiction.

He needed help. He needed care. Instead, he was locked away in a facility with one of the highest in-custody death rates in the country.

And I need the community to understand: When someone dies in jail, the punishment doesn’t end there. Their family carries the sentence for life.

My dad was more than a statistic. And when someone dies in jail, the grief doesn’t stay behind bars. It ripples. It hits their children, siblings, parents. It rewrites entire lives.

I’m one of those ripples. His death shaped my life in painful, lifelong ways — PTSD, depression, anxiety, trust issues. And an ache for justice no system could satisfy.

People say, “They made their choices.”

But let’s look at the system’s:

Criminalizing addiction instead of treating it.

Locking up nonviolent offenders without support.

Ignoring mental health needs and clear warning signs.

Burying deaths with no transparency or accountability.

That’s not justice. That’s neglect. That’s cruelty in uniform.

We’re told not to do drugs — while the same system lets predators walk free as addicts rot. It criminalizes the coping, but excuses the cause.

Where’s the justice in that?

My dad didn’t get a second chance.

He didn’t get medical care.

He didn’t get a phone call home before he died.

And I didn’t get to say goodbye.

That kind of silence breaks something in you.

What I want is simple — and overdue:

Oversight and independent investigations into all in-custody deaths.

Transparency for families.

Mental health and trauma-informed care in jails.

Diversion programs that treat addiction as illness, not crime.

A system that supports the struggling — not buries them.

And my father’s death isn’t the only one I carry. My mother died, too — not in jail, but in a care facility that treated her like her life didn’t matter. I wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to her either. Two parents gone. Not from fate — from neglect. From systems that saw their pain as inconvenient instead of urgent.

So let me say his name again:

Gary William Miller.

He mattered.

He deserved better.

So does every person still locked away, wondering if they’ll make it out alive.

This isn’t just a story.

This is a call.

To see people as people.

To stop criminalizing survival.

To start listening.

And to fix a system that’s burying the broken instead of helping them heal.

Samantha “Sunshine” Rave is the daughter of Gary William Miller.