Mentally ill in jail. By Wesley

1/4/2015

Solitary confinement is one of the saddest places on earth.  If you ever need to feel good about your own circumstances, about how badly things have gone away in your world, visit your nearest jail.

I say jail, because as part of my new digs here, I have a job.  I am a trustee.  I work in male booking and part of that is working with the people placed in "24".  These folks are placed in isolation for 24 hours, allegedly when there is no place else to put them.  The mentally ill.  The mentally handicapped.  The people on suicide watch.

You know, the people who basically have no business, at all, being in jail, but are brought here because our country doesn't fund places better suited to take them.

There are men who scream at invisible people in their cells all day long.  All day.  The venom in their voices makes it sound as if they are angry at the invisible people, so it is probably a good thing they found the cloak.

I don't mean to be flip, but it is hard to listen to these lost people for 12 hours at a time.  And they are the easier ones to hear.

I have worked 4 days and the local police department has brought in 2 severely mentally handicapped men.  They are locked alone and they neither understand where they are, or what they have done wrong.  The other day, one of them saw a cell with quite a few people processing into the jail and he started crying that he, "wanted to be with the big boys."  He tries to hug the guards and trustees that come into brief contact with him....

And he cries.  A long soulful wail of a tiny boy locked in a rubber room, (literally), naked, cold, and terrified.

How the hell can we buy another missile or tank while we allow this to happen?

Today, a new arrestee was bleeding and could not understand the guards inquiry as to where he was bleeding from.  He was scared, screaming he wanted to go home.

When the nurses came to examine him, they found that he had defecated on himself.  He didn't know how to go to the bathroom by himself.

The guards try so hard to help ease their pain, and it is evident that it hurts them to have to lock these people up.  More than once, I heard the rhetorical demand, "Why do they keep bringing them here?!", yelled in frustration.

Because there is no place else.  Because the richest country in the planet can afford to pay billions in subsidies to Chevron and Imperial Sugar, but can't afford to find a more appropriate place for the most vulnerable amongst us.

These men have committed no crimes.  They aren't capable of having the culpable mental state.  They are here because there is simply no where else.

And it is torture.  Last week, when the "hugger" was wailing, a guard said, "Welcome to the Montgomery County torture chamber".

Yup, I am ashamed of my state or my country tonight.