Over 25 hours, a mentally ill inmate begged for a doctor, screamed “help me,” tore a blanket into strips and then killed herself. A guard reported all was fine. AP/CNSmd investigate jail suicides.
commonly blamed on the mere fact that more mentally ill people are landing behind bars, a trend that started after state psychiatric hospitals began closing in the 1970s and promised alternatives failed to emerge. More recently, jails have been overwhelmed with those addicted to opioids or meth, many of whom wrestle with depression and withdrawal.
The court files contain thousands of pages of allegations and valuable clues about how and why this problem persists. For example: — Many inmates weren’t checked regularly — usually every 15-30 minutes — because of staffing shortages or inadequate training.These lawsuits represent a tiny fraction of the problem. An exclusive 50-state reporting effort to collect recent data found more than 300 suicides in local jails from 2015 to 2017 — in just nine states.
“The failure here isn’t just what a deputy or an officer in a jail does or doesn’t do. The failure is that these people are being put in a criminal environment for mental illness.”Jo-Jo or TJ, as her family called her, was a fearless girl, competing in rodeo barrel races and riding her horses through the woods into the rugged Uinta mountains. Her mother dubbed her “the horse whisperer.”
Fillmore married at age 21, and around then, her family says, she started using methamphetamines and developed a reputation as a “druggie” in their tiny eastern Utah community, Tabiona. In 2013, according to court records, Fillmore pleaded guilty to drug charges and was placed on probation. Two years later, Clark says she still appeared to be using meth, though she flushed her drugs down the toilet and vowed to quit.
Ayres, the family’s lawyer, says Fillmore wasn’t suicidal and flourished while taking medication: “All they had to do was give it to her. ... They have an obligation to provide adequate medical care.” “Any reasonable person would have not missed those signs that he was a mental health risk,” O’Brien says, noting Slinker would have been monitored more carefully with the right classification. The jail has nearly doubled its surveillance cameras.
“It is a failure of humanity and of our institutions that causes these tragedies,” Shikman says. “When they see someone who looks like they’re struggling, they don’t say, ‘Let me step in. This is someone’s mom.’... They think this is a woman on drugs doing whatever she’s going to do, she’ll shut up.”
Sheriffs frequently complain they don’t have enough money to hire mental health workers, train guards and make needed improvements to enhance inmate monitoring. The problem extends beyond budgets. Asking a jail to hold inmates awaiting trial and those serving short sentences, and also act as de facto mental health and drug treatment centers, she says, is too great a burden.Fillmore wasn’t the first person to die inside the Duchesne County Jail.
Clyde told investigators she wasn’t aware of the severity of Jensen’s illness. Frank Mylar, her lawyer, says “based on the knowledge she had, she believed she did the best she could. After the fact, would she have done something different? Absolutely.” But they did comply. In November, the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice reported 71 people died in Utah jails from 2013 to 2017. More than half — 38 — were suicides.There’s no single fix for this, but sheriffs, lawmakers and advocates have some possible answers.
In Harris County, home to Houston, the sheriff’s office teamed up last year with mental health officials for a pilot program to give inmates access to a suicide hotline. “It acted like a pressure valve,” says Sheriff’s Major Mike Lee. The program is expected to become permanent.
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