The condition of mental
healthcare inside Los Angeles
County jails is so poor that
it is unconstitutional, the US
justice department has said.

Yesterday I read a story on the BBC news service called LA jail conditions ‘unconstitutional’. The US justice department has said the condition of mental healthcare inside Los Angeles County jails is so poor that it is unconstitutional. I already knew that the Los Angeles County jail was the largest mental health facility in the USA. The reports said the “deplorable” conditions violated a ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the US Constitution.

Today I was reading in “Commonweal” magazine an article call “Cruel But Not Unusual, The Scandal of Solitary Confinement.” The increasing use of solitary confinement by jail and prison officials does great damage of prisoners, especially those with mental health or brain illnesses. He says the lack of sensory stimulation and human contract, the petty control over inmates’ daily lives; the disorientation with regard to time; and the threat of indefinite isolation” are, in his opinion and mine, “designed to do harm to the men and women subjected to it.” This seems like an obvious case of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. But it is not seen that way and the beat goes on.

I recalled my deceased son’s, Peter, experience and that of his best friend when, at various times, they acted out with their mental illnesses and were thrown in county jail in Milwaukee. They were thrown into isolation padded cells where there was nothing but them and the lights were on 24 hours. For a person with a mental illness this is the worst horror you can place the person in. Both suffered serious problems as a result of this experience. These experiences led to increase mental health problems and, in my son’s case, contributed to his eventual suicide. At the time I tried to communicate to the County Sheriff, still in office, and to the County Executive, now Governor, the horrors of this experience and how it was cruel and unusual but they simply dismissed or ignored my objections.

Now probed by the local newspaper on the lack of proper medical care and treatment in our country mental health facility the county and state government are planning, not to improve the facility, but to gradually close it down and replace it with “community treatment”. In the 80’s we tried this, closing mental health facilities rather than reforming them and it lead to persons with mental health issues being homeless or being placed in prisons or jails. Would we treat people in a serious car accident, with severe forms of cancer, persons with heart attacks, liver or kidney diseases this way, without first placing them in a hospital or health care facility before sending them to the community for treatment? Mental or brain illness are not considering illnesses like cancer or heart issues. Even in this very good article about cruel and unusual solidarity confinement in jails and prisons the author calls persons with mental illnesses “mentally ill”. Would we call persons with cancer “cancerous?”

When will we consider mental illness, be it PTSD, Alzheimer or Schizophrenia an illness just like cancer? We must first see persons with a mental illnesses as full human beings just like anyone else with any other type of illness. Only then will we open up our hospitals to persons with these illnesses. We will then provide full medical care in our mental health facilities and treat person with these illnesses not as ‘criminals’, clients or ‘mentally ill’ but place them in a hospital, not a jail, when they are very sick and after treatment send them back to the community. Equality of treatment starts with recognizing all persons with illnesses as being human beings not their illnesses.

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