LOCKED DOWN WITH THE MENTALLY ILL - DANGEROUS AND UNFAIR
It's bad enough being locked down in a cell 24 hours per day, showering once every 3 days and and treated like a - well, a criminal - but imagine being locked in a 8 x 10 cell with a man who continuously talks to himself aloud in odd voices, screams at the top of his lungs without warning at all times of the day and night, draws and posts illustrations of raping, killing, maiming and eating others on the walls - banging on the door and pressing the emergency call button tens of times per day claiming he has been assaulted, claustrophobia, panic attacks and being a general nuisance. Those were the conditions Dale Shackelford lived under for almost 3 weeks as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown at the ISCC before staff finally had enough Shackelford's mentally ill cell partner (we'll call him NC) bothering THEM and moved NC to a segregation cell.
NC's mental illness was certainly apparent before the lockdown began. Because he was his cell partner, Shackelford did attempt to help NC, assisting the 25 year old young man with getting a new tablet to replace his broken one, pushing him to enroll in GED classes, to consult with mental health staff and to get outstanding debts paid off. There were some breakthroughs. NC started to calm down, started school and was viirtually debt free. Unfortunately, any successes were negated once the lockdown began.
Idaho has a mental health problem, and that problem is only perpetuated by throwing the mentally ill in cells, locking the door and leaving them until some doctor puts them into a drug-induced stupor, and it's even worse in prison. Days, weeks and even months in an empty concrete room are long and torturous, and being alone with one's thoughts without distraction - especially where those thoughts are necessarily unrational, hallucinatory or nightmarish - cannot be rehabilitative or even humane, and certainly makes the illness even worse.
Locking a mentally ill person into a small cell with another man is dangerous and unfair to both people. NC would alternate between mania and depression. He would drink a bag of instant coffee with warm tap water in hours then become so sick he would lay in bed and moan. He would beg for coffee from other prisoners and in several instances, threatened to make up stories to tell staff to somehow incriminate them if they did not supply him with coffee or other items (Shackelford never capitulated). He would make telephone calls to various women and threaten their lives and hang up, only to call them back moments later to apologize in tears - then start the process all over again, then rant and rave for hours on what he wanted to do to them after the phone calls were over.
Unfortunately, these scenarios are playing out across the State of Idaho and throughout the nation even as you read this. These prisoners will beg, plead and cajole to be let out of these confined spaces, making excuses for the door to be opened if only for seconds to grab a breath of fresh air - throwing themselves on the floor, accusing their cell partners of assaulting them (or worse) so as to receive attention from staff or to justify their actions, kicking doors and walls, banging on tables with their heads and fists as if to relieve some of the pressure building up inside them.
Certainly there must be some confinement of prisoners, more so with the COVID-19 pandemic, but to leave prisoners, especially those with severe mental health issues in their cells 24 hours a day without reprieve (while they watch other prisoners who have not been tested out and about going to and from work assignments) is little more than torture, torture for not only the mentally ill, but torture for the people who must share a cell with them.
NC's mental illness was certainly apparent before the lockdown began. Because he was his cell partner, Shackelford did attempt to help NC, assisting the 25 year old young man with getting a new tablet to replace his broken one, pushing him to enroll in GED classes, to consult with mental health staff and to get outstanding debts paid off. There were some breakthroughs. NC started to calm down, started school and was viirtually debt free. Unfortunately, any successes were negated once the lockdown began.
Idaho has a mental health problem, and that problem is only perpetuated by throwing the mentally ill in cells, locking the door and leaving them until some doctor puts them into a drug-induced stupor, and it's even worse in prison. Days, weeks and even months in an empty concrete room are long and torturous, and being alone with one's thoughts without distraction - especially where those thoughts are necessarily unrational, hallucinatory or nightmarish - cannot be rehabilitative or even humane, and certainly makes the illness even worse.
Locking a mentally ill person into a small cell with another man is dangerous and unfair to both people. NC would alternate between mania and depression. He would drink a bag of instant coffee with warm tap water in hours then become so sick he would lay in bed and moan. He would beg for coffee from other prisoners and in several instances, threatened to make up stories to tell staff to somehow incriminate them if they did not supply him with coffee or other items (Shackelford never capitulated). He would make telephone calls to various women and threaten their lives and hang up, only to call them back moments later to apologize in tears - then start the process all over again, then rant and rave for hours on what he wanted to do to them after the phone calls were over.
Unfortunately, these scenarios are playing out across the State of Idaho and throughout the nation even as you read this. These prisoners will beg, plead and cajole to be let out of these confined spaces, making excuses for the door to be opened if only for seconds to grab a breath of fresh air - throwing themselves on the floor, accusing their cell partners of assaulting them (or worse) so as to receive attention from staff or to justify their actions, kicking doors and walls, banging on tables with their heads and fists as if to relieve some of the pressure building up inside them.
Certainly there must be some confinement of prisoners, more so with the COVID-19 pandemic, but to leave prisoners, especially those with severe mental health issues in their cells 24 hours a day without reprieve (while they watch other prisoners who have not been tested out and about going to and from work assignments) is little more than torture, torture for not only the mentally ill, but torture for the people who must share a cell with them.