With light being shed on police abuse against suspected lawbreakers this summer, I wonder if the public has taken that newfound knowledge a step further. Black lives matter, but do incarcerated lives matter? Have they thought: “If that level of abuse [...]
Courtesy: Chase Burnett Richie waited until the Corrections Officer went by his cell around midnight for the last walking head count of prisoners. He’d made a rope from ripped bed sheets. He stood on the bucket he used [...]
It is no secret that the state has used the Prison system as a dumping ground for the mentally ill. Common sense would lead an observer to conclude that an environment as degenerative as prison is not the best location to [...]
From the first day I stepped foot in a jail cell, I immediately got a good taste of what it's liked to be housed around the mentally ill. These prisoners are nothing like your average prisoner, starting with how they [...]
Courtesy of Jason Walker While this Texas prison, Clements Unit, has well over one-thousand documented mentally ill prisoners, its not considered a psych unit at all. In fact it has one small ward that has a program for [...]
After spending over five years in solitary confinement, I have finally come to realize that solitary confinement is known torture -- and the prisoners aren’t the only ones who know this. There have been extensive studies that have shown that lengthy [...]
In one sense, prisoners with mental disabilities have the same needs as everybody else. But in a crucial sense, our situation is dramatically different. Let me tell you about it. In Texas, they put the MH/MR [mental health/mental retardation] inmates [...]
BY DANIEL HARRIS, Contributing Writer Where did they expect psychiatric patients to end up when they cut Federal Funding for mental health beds? Whatever they thought, I know where they are. Here, in prison, with me. I've had two certifiably insane cellies. [...]