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This prison documentary explores how our prison industry abuses and profits off the misery of the mentally ill. People with mental health problems need treatment, not torture. Yet instead of being given the care they need, people are punished with solitary confinement and other forms of brutal abuse. As long as mental health care and prisons are privatized, corporations will profit from human suffering.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:05
[Music]
00:09
prison
00:11
the last stop on a long line of bad
00:14
encounters
00:15
for individuals who suffer from mental
00:17
illness
00:19
it seems crazy to treat a health issue
00:21
this way doesn’t it
00:23
after all we don’t send people to jail
00:26
for having cancer
00:28
and yet we criminalize the mentally ill
00:30
for a disease that produces behaviors
00:32
that are completely beyond their control
00:36
[Music]
00:41
they would come with a straight jacket
00:43
or the boom squad would come and
00:45
if you were um you know fighting back
00:48
then
00:48
maybe try to get you upside down any way
00:50
to restrain you
00:52
and sometimes people will have a
00:53
fraction on by it
00:55
if he was real rough and you’re going
00:57
off you’re having a manic moment and you
00:59
hit one of them
01:00
they might snuff you kick you i mean
01:04
i i out of my whole um 18 years
01:08
i did a total of approximately
01:11
four years in solitary confinement
01:14
[Music]
01:20
the prison system is ill-equipped to
01:22
treat people with mental illness
01:25
guards resort to abuse to force
01:26
compliance
01:28
medical care including vital medication
01:30
and therapy
01:31
are more often than not neglected
01:35
this lack of care leads to horrific
01:37
encounters which defy our very sense of
01:39
human decency
01:43
one out of every three inmates in
01:44
tennessee prisons is mentally ill
01:47
jason tole was one of them in august
01:50
2010
01:50
officers at river bend armed with tasers
01:53
and shock shields
01:54
forced jason tole out of his barricaded
01:57
cell
01:58
they then carried him out of the cell to
02:00
an unlit prison yard
02:02
and restrained him with shock shields
02:10
as much as possible decriminalize mental
02:13
health challenges right and there are
02:14
many people
02:15
who come into custody who come into the
02:17
criminal justice system
02:19
largely because of their mental health
02:21
challenges
02:22
and we need to identify that not that we
02:25
need to excuse
02:26
crime or excuse certain behavior that
02:28
needs intervention
02:29
but we need to understand how
02:31
ineffective
02:33
criminal justice involvement especially
02:35
incarceration is for folks with mental
02:36
health challenges
02:44
pete earley has written books about the
02:46
treatment of people with mental illness
02:48
this is somebody who needed help for her
02:50
mental illness she didn’t need
02:52
punishment and she ended up dead
02:54
early says instead of helping mckenna
02:56
they put her in isolation for a week
02:58
before the day they tried to transfer
03:00
her it is not good for anyone’s mental
03:02
health to be in solitary confinement
03:04
it’s not good for anyone’s
03:05
mental health to be isolated from other
03:07
people for any length of time
03:09
even a very brief period of time
03:18
[Music]
03:19
so that’s a big problem the da’s
03:23
and the judges don’t know anything about
03:25
people with mental illness
03:27
and they’re really punishing people and
03:29
as i said before
03:30
put it on cameras it’s all about money
03:33
and jobs
03:33
the fact that you’re profiting from
03:36
someone’s incarceration
03:38
um causes an issue because at the end of
03:40
the day the motive is to make money and
03:42
to make a profit
03:43
and so in that sense the
03:47
these corporations are incentivized to
03:49
fill the beds
03:50
and so there’s no incentive to
03:52
decarcerate there’s no
03:53
no incentive to rehabilitate inmates are
03:56
enduring
03:57
quote barbaric and horrific treatment
04:00
and living in a perpetual state of
04:01
crisis the lawsuit alleges that instead
04:03
of the medical care these people are
04:05
supposed to receive specifically at this
04:06
facility the prisoners health needs
04:08
are instead ignored and underfed
04:11
it was a desperate attempt we think to
04:13
escape the conditions inside the east
04:15
mississippi correctional facility
04:17
that’s a for-profit prison where the
04:19
mentally ill
04:20
are being housed
04:27
they had my son um on the ground
04:31
they had a one boot was on his neck
04:34
another
04:34
boot was kicking him and hitting him
04:38
and he there was a boot also on his head
04:41
and
04:42
he had a huge swelling and marks
04:45
all over and they would not get him
04:48
medical help until they they pushed
04:52
the swelling on his head down with their
04:55
physical hands and then got him ice
04:57
and forced it on his head and um
05:01
you know pressing it very hard
05:05
it’s such a traumatic experience that
05:07
you’re like walking around in a days
05:10
prison guards sheriffs they don’t
05:13
understand that
05:13
so they think that you’re actually being
05:15
rebellious or that you’re
05:17
being defiant and so you get a lot of
05:20
abuse
05:22
i mean because if you don’t answer them
05:23
or you don’t do what they say
05:25
you know they have other ways of making
05:27
you do what they want and
05:29
because you’re not reacting in a way
05:31
that they want you to react
05:33
the abuse keeps on coming until
05:36
they either give up or they just throw
05:39
you in a cell
05:40
and say forget it what i probably urge
05:43
is
05:43
any authorities that have oversight to
05:46
areas where
05:48
they incarcerate other people to use the
05:50
least restrictive measures
05:52
possible to provide the safety of the
05:55
other
05:56
inmates and their staff but also to
05:59
respect the
06:00
human rights and the human needs of that
06:02
prisoner
06:03
him or herself because that’s very
06:05
important i ended up getting out of the
06:08
building nine where they kept the mental
06:10
patients and
06:11
was allowed to live in general
06:12
population
06:14
and i was fine until you know they would
06:17
mess with me
06:18
and each when they would mess with me uh
06:21
we had a lot of racism going on
06:23
we had a lot of officers that were from
06:25
upstate
06:26
and one guy had a baby a black baby
06:30
um tied to a tree with a noose around
06:34
his neck
06:34
and he would stand in the midsole we
06:36
would come through the mess hall
06:37
and he would be standing there like this
06:40
and we’re walking by when you
06:42
live you have a mental diagnosis in the
06:44
institution
06:45
we all stay together so it’s like you
06:46
have to walk in one line
06:48
and you’re walking and just imagine you
06:50
see the officer sergeant standing up
06:52
there with a black baby
06:55
tattooed on the tree with a noose around
06:57
his neck
06:59
i don’t know about nobody else but it
07:01
was a trigger for me and i walked over
07:03
to him and i said how could you stand
07:05
here like that
07:05
he said get away from me nigger that’s
07:08
what he said
07:10
and he raised his hand up like he was
07:11
going to hit me
07:14
is this a humane or compassionate way to
07:16
treat another human being
07:18
suffering from a terrible affliction
07:20
[Music]
07:22
prison makes mental health conditions
07:24
much much worse
07:26
and in doing so we’ve turned a public
07:28
health problem
07:29
into a criminal one it’s time for us to
07:33
rethink how we approach mental health
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
