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After prison, a void
When mentally ill inmates are freed and sent home directly from isolation,
it's often a nightmare for unprepared families
By PAUL GRONDAHL, Albany Times Union Staff writer October 22, 2002
Linda Jackson doesn't recall the precise moment she started losing Tyree, her
23-year-old son, as he descended into madness in state prison.
It might have been when he began spending hours lolling naked on the floor in
his special housing unit (SHU) isolation cell at Elmira Correctional Facility.
That time, raving and delusional, he argued with voices in his head and smeared
himself with his own feces.
Or perhaps it was at the point when Tyree became convinced he was King Tut and
talked about having nine wives.
It might have been when he defecated on his food tray and slid it through a slot
in his isolation cell to a guard, earning more months in solitary confinement.
Flooding his cell tacked on additional months in lockdown known as The Box.
Heavy doses of anti-psychotic drugs muted Tyree's outbursts and bizarre
behavior, but also left him in a zombielike state. He stopped eating and shed 40
pounds off the muscled, 190-pound frame he boasted when he was incarcerated
nearly four years ago for burglarizing an eyeglasses shop.
"Tyree was normal when he went into prison, but now his mind is gone," said his
mother, who visited her son monthly in prison and watched his mind disintegrate
after more than three years in disciplinary isolation.
Linda Jackson faulted prison staff for focusing primarily on her son's
punishment instead of treating his mental illness. She didn't disagree with
brief disciplinary housing when her son acted out, but she said piling repeated
and lengthy time in the isolation of The Box on an already psychiatrically
troubled young man broke what sense of sanity he had.
"It's horrible. My son didn't deserve to be treated like that," Linda Jackson
says. "Prison destroyed Tyree."
But correction officials counter they did their primary job: "Overall security
and the safety of staff and inmates," according to Jim Flateau, a spokesman for
the state Department of Correctional Services. Providing treatment for mentally
ill prisoners is a secondary concern, according to DOCS policy.
"To the extent that any services OMH (Office of Mental Health) desires to
perform can be accomplished within our security parameters, we are willing to
accommodate," Flateau said.
With the work of correction officers finished, Linda Jackson was left to pick up
the pieces of her shattered son -- or King Tut, as he signed his letters.
His mother drove four hours from her home in Brooklyn to collect Tyree from the
Elmira prison on Aug. 30, his release date. He came directly from solitary
confinement, where he was allowed one hour of recreation time each day. But in
his delusional, paranoid state he had refused to leave his isolation cell for
months.
As Tyree was being processed for release to his mother, correction officials
gave him $40 and four bottles of the anti-psychotic drugs he had been medicated
with in prison.
Mother and son spoke little during the long drive home. Neither knew what they
were going to do once they got there.
Advocates
for mentally ill inmates say Tyree Jackson's story is distressingly familiar.
The minor psychiatric problems with which many prisoners enter the system often
get far worse, particularly for those inmates confined 23 hours a day to the
extreme isolation and mental pressure of solitary confinement in The Box.
"It's a family's worst nightmare to have their loved one released directly back
home from The Box," said Alison Coleman, director of Prison Families of New
York, an Albany organization that offers assistance and referrals.
Correction officials are attempting to address this gap by opening a 30-bed unit
this year at Sing Sing prison. The experimental unit is geared specifically for
mentally ill inmates approaching their release date. OMH and Division of Parole
staff members will cooperate to enhance discharge planning and provide "reach
in" services for inmates before their release.
"Only a fraction of inmates are released from disciplinary housing to the
streets," Flateau said.
For those who are, state OMH officials by law can commit, if necessary, the
released inmate to an adult facility such as the Capital District Psychiatric
Center in Albany.
If an inmate who reaches his release date is still deemed psychotic and a danger
to himself or others, the discharge plan can include involuntary commitment to a
community mental health facility like CDPC. Time served as a psychiatric patient
could last weeks, or months, until a mental health review deems it appropriate
to release the patient into the community.
By then, though, the psychiatric destruction might be irreversible, according to
Dr. Terry Kupers, a physician with a private therapy practice in Oakland,
Calif., where he treats mentally ill former prisoners.
"It's a very difficult treatment challenge, especially when they're coming
directly from segregation," said Kupers, author of "Prison Madness" and an
expert who has consulted on prison issues in a dozen states.
"After years in isolation, they've been broken down so far that all their
socialization skills are gone," Kupers said. "They need to be retrained in
normal social skills."
Kupers believes the lack of adequate mental health treatment and services in
state prisons creates a potentially dangerous situation after release. "About 90
percent of all state prison inmates are eventually released back to the
community, and if they've been brutalized in prison and filled with psychotic
rage, they're going to be a danger when they get out," Kupers said.
Advocacy and watchdog groups are calling for sweeping correction policy reform
in the way mentally ill inmates are treated in the New York state prison system.
Among the changes sought in a federal lawsuit filed by the Prisoners' Rights
Project of the Legal Aid Society, Prisoners' Legal Services of New York and
Disability Advocates Inc. are these:
 | Appoint an independent mental health professional to assess the treatment
of prisoners with mental illness. |
| Increase capacity at the 190-bed Central New York Psychiatric Center,
unchanged in two decades. |
| Increase trained mental health staff to provide adequate mental health
screening, monitoring and treatment within the prison system. |
In its report "State of the Prisons," The Correctional Association of New
York calls for cooperation between state correction officials and OMH
administrators in making these additional policy changes:
| Discontinue the practice of confining inmates with serious mental illness
in isolation in disciplinary housing. |
| Require that OMH staff participate in disciplinary hearings for any inmate
who is on the OMH caseload. |
| Improve discharge planning and coordination. |
State Department of Correctional Services Commissioner Glenn Goord released a
four-page rebuttal to the "State of the Prisons" report and dismissed it as
"outdated material and outright fiction."
"Unfortunately, it's the department's typical knee-jerk attack," said Robert
Gangi, executive director of The Correctional Association of New York, a
watchdog group.
Flateau said DOCS officials are responding to a growing number of mentally ill
prisoners. Last year, Goord ordered four-hour mandatory training in identifying,
understanding and dealing with the needs of mentally ill inmates for all 32,500
DOCS employees.
new initiatives come too late for Tyree Jackson.
There was no homecoming as Tyree returned to his single mother's two-bedroom
Brooklyn apartment at the end of August. She had brought in an extra mattress to
the bedroom he shares with his two younger brothers, ages 8 and 13.
"He just kind of stares off into space and seems like a zombie. He never goes
out," Linda Jackson said. "He's 23 years old, but his mind seems like a boy of
11 or 12."
Tyree said he was glad he doesn't remember many details about what happened to
his mind in The Box.
"I just went crazy," he said.
He wound up in The Box after tussling with a guard he claimed taunted him. He
does not recall smearing himself with feces or his psychotic ravings. He said
passing feces to a guard and flooding his cell were acts of defiance and
desperation.
"I've got a temper problem and I can blow up," he said.
His mother worries what will become of Tyree, who seems incapable now of
attending school or holding down a job. He's complained recently about not
wanting to take his medication. He balks about an appointment with a mental
health professional.
"I'm just taking it one day at a time," his mother said.
He sometimes talks crazy, his mother said, and once brought up the King Tut
delusion.
"There ain't no kings up in here, boy," his mother told her son, wagging a
finger.
That quieted Tyree's rant. At least for now.
Source:
http://www.timesunion.com/aspstories/storyprint.asp?storyID=63941
Freedom eludes inmate suffering bipolar disorder
Troy man waits to return to family after ordeal in prison, solitary
confinement and then psychiatric ward
By PAUL GRONDAHL, Albany Times Union Staff writer October 22, 2002
After two years in state prison, including four months in solitary confinement
and five months at the Central New York Psychiatric Center, John Paul Williams
reached his conditional state prison release date.
Authorities had to let Williams go from CNYPC, but the mental condition of the
38-year-old Troy man left him a prisoner of another sort.
"I just can't wait to get out of here," Williams said. "Here" is the Capital
District Psychiatric Center in Albany. He's been involuntarily committed there
since Aug. 16. State mental health staff determined Williams was not mentally
stable enough to go home because he might pose a danger to himself or others.
No firm date for Williams' ultimate freedom has been determined. His maximum
expiration date is Feb. 16 for a 1- to 3-year sentence for fourth-degree
possession of stolen property and third-degree criminal mischief.
Across the Hudson River, Williams' wife and four young children yearn for his
return.
"I think he's ready to come home. I need John to help me with the kids," Fay
Williams said. The couple has been married for seven years. They have four
children, ages 2 to 8. Fay Williams said she has struggled as a single mother
with her husband in prison. She works long hours, often night shifts, at a Rite
Aid pharmacy.
"My husband was a big help when he was home," Fay Williams said. Her husband was
in charge of domestic duties, such as cleaning the house, getting the kids to
school, bringing them to story time and other childhood activities. Her husband
also worked part time as a janitor at Wal-Mart.
John Paul Williams, a Rensselaer High School dropout, was diagnosed with bipolar
disorder several years ago. "He was doing fine as long as he didn't drink, but
the chemical imbalance would flare up with alcohol," his wife said.
Williams said he was drunk on gin when Troy police arrested him two years ago
and charged him with possession of a stolen credit card. Taken into custody, he
got angry and kicked out a window at the Rensselaer County Jail, earning the
additional charge of criminal mischief.
Although Williams entered state prison for the fourth time, he had never before
encountered the extreme isolation and mental stress of The Box. He ended up
there after fighting with another inmate at Clinton prison and was transferred
to a disciplinary housing cell at Southport.
"He'd been doing OK at Clinton, studying to be a barber and then everything went
wrong," said his wife, who frequently visited Williams at Clinton.
At Southport, the rigidity of lockdown seemed to exacerbate Williams' bipolar
disorder. "I talked to a doctor who said John was hallucinating and really out
there," his wife said. "He didn't know who anybody was. He refused medication."
"I got stressed out to the max. I bugged out," John Williams said.
Williams' psychotic behavior worsened, and he was led from his Southport
isolation cell in handcuffs and shackles to Elmira prison's mental health
satellite unit for psychiatric observation. At Elmira, Williams alleges prison
guards stripped him naked, beat him with batons, kicked him in the arms and head
and injected him with a powerful tranquilizer.
"I was shackled and couldn't defend myself," he said. "They made me call them
master. They said I'd better obey when I come to their jail."
Nina Loewenstein, staff attorney with Disability Advocates in Albany, filed a
grievance on Williams' behalf. She also is following up on similar claims of
abuse suffered by mentally ill inmates.
"We take all complaints and allegations of beatings very seriously and always
follow up," said Hal Smith, executive director of CNYPC and head of the state's
forensic mental health system.
Smith said his own review, as well as additional investigations and reports from
officials with state correction and the inspector general's office, did not
substantiate Williams' allegations. "The case is now considered closed," Smith
said. Despite similar allegations, repeated investigations have uncovered
"nothing systemic and no pattern" of abuse by prison guards of mentally ill
inmates in satellite units, he said.
Meanwhile, Williams continues to wait and hope for his freedom.
"I want things to get back to the way they were," said Williams, a soft-spoken
man with glasses and a powerful 265-pound frame. "I'm doing everything they ask
me to do in here."
That includes taking a daily 20-milligram dose of Zyprexa, a relatively small
amount of anti-psychotic medication.
"I've been meeting with his social worker, and he says John is doing well, but
he needs to work his way up the tier levels to get released," his wife said.
Mental health staff grant patients like Williams additional privileges and
incremental freedoms as they move up tiers based on a patient's progress --
eventually earning release. Fay Williams was told moving up to the top tier, and
release, could take months in her husband's case. There is no set time frame.
Fay Williams said she can only hope the mental ordeal her husband endured in
state prison is behind him now.
"He was fine before prison, but after all he's been through I wonder how he'll
act when he's finally free," she said. "Prison made his bipolar condition much
worse, and he never got good treatment in there. Now he's starting to get
depressed again waiting to come home to his family."
Source: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=63999&category=FRONTPG&newsdate=10/22/2002
-----------------------------------
A second chance
First published: Tuesday, October 22, 2002
There are few services or opportunities for a mentally ill inmate after release
from prison.
Thomasetta Harper knows this from firsthand experience, which is why she started
a pilot program six months ago in Harlem to address the gap.
"The problem is that the inmate didn't get adequate mental health services in
prison, their psychiatric problems got worse, and then they get out and nobody
wants to give them a chance," said Harper, a former inmate who overcame mental
illness problems herself.
Called Steps to a Renewed Reality, or STAR, the state-funded work training
program began with 29 mentally ill former inmates. "The aim is to help them
unlearn all the anti-social and psychotic behavior that helped them survive
prison and to get them back into normal society," said Harper, whose group is
part of the Howie T. Harp Center's mental health services.
Of the 29 who started, just 15 remain in the program. Some washed out, others
quit and returned to public assistance. Those who complete the program will be
certified as forensic peer specialists. They will look for jobs counseling other
mentally ill former inmates.
"Being mentally ill and an ex-convict is a double strike," Harper said. "But
they're all human beings just looking for a second shot at life."
-- Paul Grondahl
Source:
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=64000&category=FRONTPG&newsdate=10/22/2002
This 'Mental Health E-News' posting is a service of the New
York Ass'n of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, a statewide coalition of
people who use and/or provide community mental health services dedicated to
improving services and social conditions for people with psychiatric
disabilities by promoting their recovery, rehabilitation and rights.
To join our list, e-mail us your request and, where
appropriate, the name of your organization to
NYAPRS@aol.com.
Last Updated on
02/20/2005
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