On prisoners who are mentally ill
I was having breakfast today with one of the very fine newspaper reporters in this state, and one of the topics of discussion was the treatment of the mentally ill in Michigan prisons.
I had been working on a case in which a mentally challenged prisoner was beaten by guards at Huron Valley. I asked the Michigan State Police to investigate, and Detective Sergeant Dale Smith reported back to me that the behavior of the guards was justified because the prisoner started the fracas. That doesn't surprise me at all, and that is not the issue.
Simply stated, here's what has happened in Michigan. We closed the mental institutions, thinking we knew of a better plan for the mentally ill. Instead, many of those persons wound up sleeping under bridges, which led to their arrest and incarceration in county jails. Additional problems led to the placement of many mentally challenged people in the Michigan prison system.
The results were predictable. Prisoners don't know how to handle the mentally ill, so they beat the tar out of them. Guards don't know how to handle prisoners who don't have the mental capacity to respond properly to their orders, commands and demands, and so they punish them. Remember Timmy Souders? Prisoners tell me that similar incidents occur on a regular basis.
We need more advocates for the mentally challenged, not only in Michigan but in many other states.
And the quicker we get these people out of our prison systems, the better!
I had been working on a case in which a mentally challenged prisoner was beaten by guards at Huron Valley. I asked the Michigan State Police to investigate, and Detective Sergeant Dale Smith reported back to me that the behavior of the guards was justified because the prisoner started the fracas. That doesn't surprise me at all, and that is not the issue.
Simply stated, here's what has happened in Michigan. We closed the mental institutions, thinking we knew of a better plan for the mentally ill. Instead, many of those persons wound up sleeping under bridges, which led to their arrest and incarceration in county jails. Additional problems led to the placement of many mentally challenged people in the Michigan prison system.
The results were predictable. Prisoners don't know how to handle the mentally ill, so they beat the tar out of them. Guards don't know how to handle prisoners who don't have the mental capacity to respond properly to their orders, commands and demands, and so they punish them. Remember Timmy Souders? Prisoners tell me that similar incidents occur on a regular basis.
We need more advocates for the mentally challenged, not only in Michigan but in many other states.
And the quicker we get these people out of our prison systems, the better!
Comments