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Monday, June 3rd, 2024

The Little-Known Reason Counties Keep Building Bigger Jails: Architecture Firms

Author:     Amanda Abrams
Source:     The Intercept
Publication Date:     May 31 2024 | 6:00 a.m.
 Link: The Little-Known Reason Counties Keep Building Bigger Jails: Architecture Firms
Stephan:  

There was a time in the United States when there were safe residential mental health institutions staffed by physicians, nurses, and orderlies all over the country. My father, who was an anesthesiologist, would volunteer time for surgeries at one called Longwood and, in the summer, I would sometimes go out with him and swim in the swimming pool they had for the residents while he was at work. Then the Republicans, under Nixon, arranged to close them all throwing thousands of mentally ill men and women out on the streets, or frequently into jails and prisons. The American Gulag is the largest most populous incarceration system in the world. Over two million people are under lock and key, many there more for their mental illnesses than any crime they have committed. And the whole system since Reagan and the rise of private prisons has been increasingly turned into profit operations. One result of that has been the creation of the new American slavery where prisoners are made to work for less than a dollar an hour (See my podcast on The New American Slavery).

IAN BAZUR-PERSING WAS in a good place. Mental illness had dogged him for years, but by 2022, the 41-year-old was stable: settled into a sober living community in his hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, working for a lawn care company, and meditating regularly. He felt so good, in fact, that he went off his medication.  

Within weeks, he was in a state of psychosis. He and his parents sought assistance from local emergency rooms and the city’s crisis intervention team, but they couldn’t get any real help. On Christmas Eve, armed with an axe and a hunting knife, Bazur-Persing — who’d never before committed a serious crime — performed three robberies in quick succession, walking away with $610, a pair of earbuds, and a Bluetooth speaker.

He landed in the Allen County jail. No one gave him a psychological evaluation to determine his mental health status, and when Bazur-Persing’s parents, mindful of their son’s suicidal tendencies, urged medical personnel to reach out to his longtime provider about medications he might need, they refused.

“It was substandard care,” Ian’s mother, Lori Bazur-Persing, recalled. The crowded facility where her son remained for 75 days pretrial was the opposite of therapeutic. “There are no recreational facilities, […]

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2 Comments

  1. Albus Eddie on Monday, June 3, 2024 at 6:05 am

    This is a feature of the system, not a bug. The legislators have designed this system to punish the mentally ill. Just like the “war on drugs” it stigmatizes common individuals for non-violent behavior. The solution imposed is draconian, expensive, and ineffective. It is rooted in a philosophy which does not trust common people to live their lives without State supervision. It is a mental virus infecting Democrats and Republicans both. The sooner we can rid ourselves of it, the better off all of us will be.

  2. Terri Quint on Monday, June 3, 2024 at 9:11 am

    The other side is the private prisons, not state-run. More deaths have occurred because inmates are not being given proper medical treatment, food is deplorable, and the guards clearly are not well-trained or paid enough. The US no longer tries to rehabilitate inmates or help them enough to go into society as a productive citizen, so the recidivist rate is very high. We need to look at the Scandinavian countries and the training and rehab programs they have that make the recidivist rate one of the lowest in the world.