JAILS AND PRISONS - THE NEW ASYLUMS:

Inside the "new asylums" prisons crammed with the mentally ill.

Nearly 500,000 mentally ill men and women are now locked up in America's jails and prisons. That's 10 times the number who remain in its psychiatric hospitals.

In a system that's custom-built for security and punishment, not treatment, ill-equipped jailers double as caretakers of a burgeoning population of schizophrenic, paranoid and psychotic prisoners.

For many mentally ill people, prisons have become first and last option. The old safety net has gone. As psychiatric hospitals shut down, patients went onto the streets and became a policing problem, then a corrections problem.

The system has begun to feed on itself.

The courts now look to jails and prisons as the best chance of providing any treatment. "When you know the courts are more apt to send a person to prison because they're going to get treated, there's something disconcerting about that," observes the U.S. state of Ohio's Corrections chief, Reginald Wilkinson.

While the U.S. is the focus of this program, the issues it raises resonate loudly in Australia where mental health agencies estimate nearly half of the prison population suffers mental illness.

Authorities in the American state of Ohio, allowed cameras to go deep inside a jail system warehousing thousands of mentally ill prisoners. With unprecedented access to therapy and treatment sessions, crisis wards and prison disciplinary tribunals.

"THE NEW ASYLUMS": this PBS Frontline film starkly portrays how society has failed the mentally ill will be aired on Four Corners Monday night June 20, 2005 at 8:30 PM (AEST).

Basic Description of Mental Illness:

Any of various conditions characterised by impairment of an individual's normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioural functioning, and caused by social, psychological, biochemical, genetic, or other factors, such as infection or head trauma. Also called emotional illness, mental disease, mental disorder.

Basic Description of Mental Retardation:

Mental retardation is defined differently than mental illness. Retardation is indicated by sub-normal intellectual development as a result of congenital causes, brain injury, or disease and characterised by any of various cognitive deficiencies, including impaired learning, social, and vocational ability. Also called mental deficiency.

Common Mental Illnesses of Prisoners, including of Prisoners on Death Row: Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia, Suicide.

By ACADP posted 17 June 05

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Resource on Capital Punishment

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Scott Simpson 34 died in custody on 7 June 2004 leaving behind a child. It is alleged that he hanged himself in a segregation yard at Long Bay Prison Complex. Justice Action has reasons to believe that Scott had been mistreated from the time he was taken into custody and the subsequent events that ensued that led to his sad death. We think that his treatment may well have caused his death.

Doctor Ron Woodham I presume?
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Isolation, psychiatric treatment and prisoner' control
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Watchdogs slaughtered in NSW
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Escape proof but not so the prisoners mind
Fewer prisoners escape from prison these days because they're "cemented in" by materials that do not break and by legislation that can keep prisoners in jail until they die.

Carr's Castle the real story H.R.M.U.The High Risk Management Unit Goulburn Correctional Centre. A prisoner writes, " I was unsuccessful in my letters to Dr Matthews CEO of the Corrections Health Service on my problem regarding air - claustrophobic effect the cells have on me. Just recently the management decided my injuries are not seriously affecting me so no further discussions are necessary.

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Apparently one prisoner had been mistreated and held in isolation in an SHU (Segregation Housing Unit) [Solitary Confinement] because, he'd had and altercation with a screw. SHUs cause severe mental harm - regarded as torture - and are a cruel, inhumane and degrading way to keep prisoners.

No Safe Place
In a brief four month span from August 1999, five men died in Tasmania's Risdon prison. Their deaths have put the state's corrections system in the dock and led to the planned demolition of a jail which even the State's Attorney-General now calls an "appalling facility".

Association for the Prevention of Torture
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Corrected or Corrupted
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ICOPA XI International Conference on Penal Abolition
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Detention Centres, Solitary Confinement
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2nd Renaissance - Beyond Industrial Capitalism and Nation States Some Practicalities Of Emptying The Prisons [287] Given the importance that prisons and punishment have in maintaining control of increasingly restless populations, the task of achieving the release of the people in the jails and the closure of those institutions, seems daunting. But it is so vital to the 2nd Renaissance that we must find ways to do it.

Breakthrough in prison revolt

Philippines: The Un-Australian: "NEGOTIATORS last night made a breakthrough in the 12-hour standoff with al-Qa'ida-linked militants?, (suspected and imprisoned people) who staged an escape attempt from a Philippines prison that left six people dead."

"Hundreds of snipers and police special forces units had surrounded a group of armed prisoners on an upstairs floor of the Camp Bagong Diwa jail." "The militants?, had earlier overpowered prison guards and seized three of their guns during a routine early-morning count of the 435 prison inmates, who include 129 members of the al-Qa'ida-linked Abu Sayyaf group?, facing trial for kidnapping and murder."? "The ensuing shoot-out died down by mid-morning as negotiators using loudspeakers started trying to persuade the prisoners to surrender. "

Funny how the alleged militants got the guns off the real militants yet they're regarded by the Un-Australian's as militants? Are the prisoners militants because they got the guns after being pissed off with their treatment or are the militants the militants they got the guns off?

What about,' the prisoners had earlier overpowered prison guards and seized three of their guns during a routine early-morning count of the 435 prison inmates, who include 129 people of an alleged suspected terrorist group, facing trial for allegedly kidnap and murder'.

See how Australian you can be if you're on side and honest about it? So why can't the Un-Australian actually report the truth? Your guess is as good as mine but I dare say they must like the terrorist ideal? Question is what compels them to lie and take up the terrorist ideology? What's in it for them?

Anyway to cut a long wrong story short let's see if we can show them the error of their wicked ways at the Un-Australian Newspaper, aye!

Reasonable request

The negotiators won provisional agreement for the prisoners to end the standoff in exchange for security guarantees, the right to a speedy trial, and access to the press to air their case and the right to have their own lawyers. And better prison conditions.

"It's a win-win solution," national police spokesman Leopoldo Bataoil told reporters?

But late last night however, the surrender had yet to begin.

Better conditions

The prisoners who negotiated the terms called for better jail conditions and a faster resolution of the criminal cases against them.

Blah Blah Blah

However, state prosecutors insisted the violence was part of an escape attempt hatched by the Abu Sayyaf members as early as last month?

"We warned the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology about three weeks ago, and as late as last week, of the planned escape attempt. Apparently our warnings were ignored," state prosecutor Peter Medalle told reporters.

Lots of suspicion and mere speculation

State prosecutor Leo Dacera said the authorities had intercepted a telephone conversation between Alhamser Limbong, the leader of the prison revolt, and Abu Sayyaf leader Jainal Sali, who is still at large, in which the detainee "requested that eight safehouses be prepared"?

The Manila jail holds many of the top leaders of the Abu Sayyaf?, as well as some of the suspects in the worst terrorist attacks in The Philippines. They include the suspects?, in the 2000 bombing of Manila's overhead rail system that claimed more than 20 lives, and the alleged perpetrators?, of the firebombing of a ferry on Manila Bay last year that killed more than 100 people, Mr Bataoil said.

Manila police spokesman Superintendent Agerino Cruz said three jail guards and one prisoner had been killed.

Other police sources put the death toll at six, including four prison inmates and two prison guards. The sources said a prisoner and a guard were wounded. Two prison guards were dragged out of the building by colleagues and carried to ambulances. Manila police chief Avelino Razon said the uprising appeared to have been instigated by "a core group of 10".

Don't believe Lomibao

The gunmen were "hardened criminals, terrorists", national police chief Arturo Lomibao said.?

Parouk Hussin, the governor of a Muslim self-rule area in the south called the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and legislator Mujib Hataman had entered the prison compound to help authorities negotiate with the gunmen.

Blah Blah Blah

Mr Bataoil said the gunmen were 'believed to be led'?, by Alhamser Limbong and Tahir Abdul Gafar, both on trial for the kidnapping of a group of tourists, including three Americans, in the western Philippines in 2001. Several of the captives, including two Americans, were later killed in the year-long hostage drama.

But with all the speculation, beliefs, suspects and allegations it makes you wonder whose telling the truth? And why these men tried to escape makes more sense than what the prison authorities and the government purport.

What is wrong with the right to a speedy trial, access to the press to air their case and the right to have their own lawyers? What is wrong with better prison conditions?

In short a prison revolt for a revolting prison, no doubt!

If we are going to believe the eventual judgement here in Australia, I take it that the proceeding would be fair and just? Especially if the Australian authorities and pro-government media press in Australia are going to highlight terrorist and the dangers by promoting witches and demons that aren't given a fair and speedy trial with access to the press to be able to help the rest of us understand exactly what happened to them?

By The Un-Australian and Just Us 15 March 05

Most women 'should not be jailed'

Women make up 6% of the prison population in England and Wales

Imprisonment of women should be "virtually abolished", a prison reform group has said.

The Howard League for Penal Reform said jail should be reserved for women who commit serious or violent offences and remain a danger to the public.

Fewer than 10% of the 4,400 women currently locked up in England and Wales would receive jail terms if such a policy were introduced.

The number of female inmates has almost trebled since 1993.

Howard League chief Frances Crook will present the policy paper to the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention in Bangkok next month.

"Women are being sent to prison in unacceptable numbers and are suffering disproportionately when they are inside," she said.

"Even the Government recognises that this is not a consequence of increased crime amongst women but rather greater severity by the courts.

"The Howard League is recommending that prison custody for women should be virtually abolished so that only those women who are convicted of serious and violent offences and who represent a continuing danger to the public should be held in custody.

"For other women offenders, community-based interventions that make amends for the wrong done and encourage women to change their lives offer the best change of creating a safer society."

The number of women being sent to jail - many on short sentences - increased to 13,380 in 2002, a leap of about a third compared with just three years earlier.

By The Howard League posted 9 March 05

Related:

Children of Imprisoned Mothers
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Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO)
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Concern as UK prison suicides hit record level
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End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
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Parents on the inside leave children on the edge
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2nd Renaissance -36 Let The Girls Go! [263]
During 2003 an Australian woman, Kathleen Folbigg, was sentenced to 40 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 30 years. Her crime, which she continues to deny, was to consecutively smother her four children when they were aged between 8 and 19 months. She was largely convicted on the basis of entries in her private diary, although these did not specifically refer to her having killed her two sons and two daughters; only that she was her father's daughter. Her lawyers are appealing her conviction.

Robin Egan

Michael Egan want's to rob the poor and give it to the Government.

Two thirds of fines are never collected because they go beyond the means of the defendants and because in lots of cases people do not see that they are responsible. Especially where people know their in the right and no fine ought to have been a penalty.

Being set up on the trifecta for instance, abusive language, resist arrest, and assault police. Where base charges are not proven but nonsense charges are held. Where you're busted for a joint or small amount of illicit drug floating around in your pocket from a late night out.

Traffic offenses when you know you are in the right but through some fluke of nature you're held responsible but the traffic branch won't listen to your reason.

What about good will when some of the poor cannot pay and sometimes they can, then you could way up the fact that you get one third and have allot of good will. Good will, always receiving one third in three. You know what they say; "a bird in the hand is worth three in the bush".

You can always line up wheel chairs for the brain injured like what happened to Jamie Partlick before fine defaulters were taken away from NSW Prisons after he was bashed for being there.

Michael Egan's new formula as follows:

Subtracted from 3 thirds the total of claims. 1. Payments, 2. Good will 3. Bankrupts, and 4. Mistakes then you end up with all the money you were due.

Then you may lead by example and pay all the unpaid compensation claims you have held back from the respondents in their civil claims against the Government left lingering until the respondents are too sick to enjoy it or deceased.

By Gregory Kable 18 April 2002

ED: Perhaps we can just open an account with the Reserve Bank, yeah!