Mentally Ill in Custody

This is an article I found to be interesting and relevant to our discussion of problems with confining mentally ill individuals. http://www.twincities.com/ci_11049839?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com

Coerced Confessions

Unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to hear Darrell Cannon speak in class.  However, the topic of coerced confessions has been of great interest to me since taking a course that covered issues related to Psychology and Law.  Through my internship this semester I am working with a White Paper written about this topic.  [...]

3 Videos of Mentally Ill in Solitary

Compare these three videos. 1) An independently produced and directed video to 2) a local news story to 3) a 60 Minutes segment. Each is reporting about the placement of mentally ill prisoners in solitary. How does the documentary film style compare to the news coverage? Trapped: Mental Illness in America’s Prisons from Jenn Ackerman [...]

Timothy Souders; punished to the point of death?

I just read the article about the death of 21-year-old Timothy Souders while he was incarcerated in a segregation cell at Southern Michigan Correctional.  The article horrified me because of the multiple injustices involved in the case.  First of all, TS shouldn’t have been in solitary confinement when his conditions of bipolar disorder, hyperactivity and [...]

REMEMBERING-Is torture of mentally ill ever justified?

I don’t know if any of you had a chance to read the article from last class regarding the case and death of Timothy Soulders,but I though it was completely appalling. It literally made me physically sick to read about the conditions he was subjected to,hours before the died. I’m not going to go into [...]

Articles regarding elderly inmates

In reading the articles on aging prison populations I was not surprised to see that average cost per elderly inmate was around $67,000 annually, which is about three times the cost of a younger prisoner. I was surprised however, when I realized after reading that inmates do not qualify for Medicare or Medicaid thus placing [...]

Telepsychiatry: The future of mental healthcare?

This article discusses the growth of telepsychiatry, the practice of psychiatry through video conferencing.  This technology is being used in hospitals, clinics, schools, and prisons.  The article highlights many advantages of telepsychiatry but does not discuss its shortcomings.  I think more time and research is needed before telepsychiatry can be deemed the preferred method of [...]

Supermax prisons: Existing or Living?

When reading Rhodes’ article, centering around her anthropological background, I found her perspective unique in discussing prisoners as beings, and no longer really human.  She ingeniously described prisoners as merely existing, rather than actually living, regardless of what amenities they are provided.  One consequence of supermax prisons is the inability to relate the self to [...]

I had never cut myself

Since I arrived at Tamms things have changed dramatically for me. Before I came to Tamms I had never cut myself but after coming to Tamms I started cutting on myself was placed in restraints numerous times was placed on psychotropic medication both voluntary and involuntary which I had never taken before coming to Tamms, [...]

tired boxer’s head

Since being at Tamms, I suffer symptoms of depression, frustration, paranoia, mental anguish, sleep disorder, deterioration of my physical health, general mental torture… These symptoms are made worse when the administration uses mentally ill prisoners as tools, or as torture device to either drive otherwise normal prisoners over the edge…the mentally ill prisoners drive the [...]

this knowledge overwhelms us

This facility functions more as a mental institution than a prison of rehabilitation and it serves no penalogical purpose other than to warehouse prisoners. As the duration of our isolation drags on and the degree of our conditions of confinement deteriorate you begin to see the psychological effect that this place has on us. We [...]