Prisons for the Mentally Ill (Part I)
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009Prisons for the Mentally Ill ( Part I )
By Michael Wachter
According to a recent news piece on N.P.R., Florida has a new and novel proposal for treating the states mentally ill citizens who aren’t receiving their medications and are, as a consequence, committing criminal acts. Incarcerate them! Yes, the state wants to build three new prisons to house mentally ill offenders, who desperately need psychological treatment and medication to correct their behavior.
Incarceration is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a viable means of providing treatment to the mentally ill. On the contrary, incarceration only serves to encourage mental illness in those who have no previous history of it, and to greatly exacerbate existing mental conditions in those with psychological problems. State officials, lawmakers, and prison authorities are well aware of these facts and thus, I would assert that their motives for wanting to incarcerate the mentally ill are stated disingenuously, and with sinister ulterior motives.
The prison setting is in no way equipped to address and treat, in any meaningful way, persons with mental illness. For example, at Washington Correctional Institution, in Chipley, Florida (which is an institution specifically designated as a facility for treating mentally ill inmates who require medications), the mental health services staff routinely neglect, and often times ignore, the mentally ill inmates they are employed to care for! What is worse, the corrections officers consistently refuse to grant inmates access to mental health services staff, in emergency situations. Instead, corrections officials sadistically antagonize inmates who are experiencing psychological emergencies, with the deliberate intent of setting the inmate off, at which point they usually gas the inmate.
Often they use the situation as an excuse for use of force, and beat the inmate. This is a pervasive practice in Washington C.I.’s main unit confinement area. On a daily basis, it is not unusual to have upwards to ten gassings in confinement. Compared, statistically, to other facilities statewide, Washington C.I. has one of, if not the highest rates of using gas on inmates. It also has an alarming rate of use of force.
With these facts in mind, I question how these practices serve to treat what are seriously mentally ill inmates? When an inmate is expressing feelings of suicidal ideation and asks to see mental health services staff, by declaring a psychological emergency, in compliance with institutional rules and regulations, only to be told by a correctional officer (who is NOT a competent authority able to judge an inmates mental state, I might emphasize), to “Get off the door, and shut the fuck up!” Or worse, told to go ahead and “Do it, kill yourself!” the problem ceases to be the inmate. The problem is the officer.
Compounding the problems at Washington C.I. is an entirely ineffective and subverted mental health services staff. Anyone slightly familiar with the treatment of psychological problems is aware that a competent diagnosis and effective treatment plan of each patient’s mental health problems is required. Personalized, one-on-one therapy. Properly prescribed medications. Close observation inside of a therapeutic setting, designed to rigorously treat mental illness.
Few, if any of these needs and criteria are met by the prison setting, which is an absolute diametric opposition to the effective treatment of mental illness, as I’ve already established, by detailing the standards of habit and practice at Washington C.I., for correctional officers dealing with and addressing mentally ill inmates under their care, custody and control.
In the case of medical services staff in general, and mental health services in specific, they are working for the state prison system because they are professional failures in the competitive medical field outside of the prison setting. Put bluntly, they are working in prison because it is the only environment left that will tolerate their incompetence, and near absolute lack of professionalism. A high percentage of prison medical services employees have been fired from previous employment in major hospitals, or from assisting doctors in their private practice. Most of the physicians employed by the department of corrections are foreigners who have been sued out of practice for malpractice and overall ineptness. They are hired by the department because they are cheap, and easy to control. They are so happy to be employed that they become puppets, not doctors. This is a key point to consider, and emphasize, because medical departments in prisons, and especially at Washington C.I., become the first line of defense for officials needing to cover up abuses of inmates by officers and/or suspicious deaths.
In exchange for aiding and abetting in the commission of criminal activities by officers ranging from covering up and falsifying reports, including documentation of excessive use of force incidents, to outright murder, the Institutional Administrative Staff responds with the quid pro quo of allowing medical staff to provide the least amount of services to inmates, assuring the greatest profits to the medical department, a privatized entity. The corruption is virtually all pervasive and categorical.
Unfortunately, proving this is extremely difficult and would require literally the insertion of persons with a mandate to go into the prison and document and collect evidence of the activities that are occurring. The state won’t do this on its own, because the result would be indicting its own agency for these practices. Getting the federal government involved is a bureaucratic nightmare. Incidents where the Feds have become involved are so extreme that they had no choice but to become involved.
Thus the only practical and effective way to place a whistle blower into position in prison medical departments would be for a group of private citizens to take it upon themselves to be hired into prisons specifically for the purpose of collecting evidence and documenting incidents. Once a preponderance of evidence has been collected, give it to investigative reporters at 60 Minutes or Fox News, so they could break the story and bring down the wrath of God.
This has never been tried before, and it may take time for it to be explored as a practical means to expose medical negligence, malpractice and violations of state and federal laws in Florida prisons. To be continued…
Michael Wachter