Global Crisis

From Oregon Public Radio:

Prisoners with severe mental illness are routinely tasered, pepper-sprayed, isolated, and denied access to adequate mental health care - according to a new report by Disability Rights Oregon.
Disability Rights looked at the Behavioral Health Unit at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
That’s where prisoners with severe mental illness, who’ve committed violent crimes, are often placed.
Sarah Radcliffe, an attorney with Disability Rights, says they found prisoners being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; and an imbalance of power between security and medical staff, which led to inadequate mental health care. “And we also found that prisoners in this unit are subjected to frequent unnecessary use of force, by staff, often in response to behaviors that are related to their mental illnesses,” she said.

The whole report from DRO is here in pdf.

We have to rebuild our whole mental system from the ground up with massive community-based supports, as part of the path of ending mass incarceration.

Daniel Trebas hasn't had an easy time in the Fresno County jail. The convicted sex offender has served his punishment, plus about 15 extra years after he was deemed mentally disordered. And after seven years in a wheelchair, he says a doctor ordered it taken away as retaliation for his previous complaints against her.
Jail staff overrode the doctor's order and gave it back after 37 days, and then a detective started digging into whether his rights were violated. What he found, according to a search warrant Action News uncovered, was a man who was a victim of dependent care abuse whose medical records had been falsified and altered.
"Was there fraud in covering up the fact that a wheelchair was taken away?" said ABC30 legal analyst Tony Capozzi. "And if it was taken away, was it for medical reasons or was it for some kind of punishment or retribution?"

It may or may not have happened, of course, but it would fit a larger pattern of wheelchairs and other assistive tech devices being seen as optional, as benefits, that one can strip away (for example - the blind child whose cane was removed by the school).

Then there's the recent story of the homeless deaf immigrant who was not provided an interpreter when arrested and jailed for weeks. He can't write in English (not that this matters - interpretation is a right, not a choice), so Abreham Zemedagegehu didn't even know why he was arrested:

He knew he was in jail, but he didn't know why.
Eventually, Abreham Zemedagegehu learned that he'd been accused of stealing an iPad — an iPad whose owner later found it. He spent the next six weeks in jail, unable to communicate with his jailers because he is deaf. He described a frightening, isolated experience in which medical procedures were performed without his consent and he feared for his safety.
Zemedagegehu sued the Arlington County sheriff last month in federal court, saying his treatment failed to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
"I felt like I was losing my mind," Zemedagegehu said through an interpreter in an interview at his lawyer's office. "I thought Virginia would give me an interpreter and they said no. That's why I felt lost."
Zemedagegehu, who is homeless, is a U.S. citizen who was born in Ethiopia. He grew up using Ethiopian Sign Language. He has learned American Sign Language, but he has never learned more than rudimentary written English.

Note: In jail for a stolen iPad that wasn't actually stolen.

Assistive technology must be treated by authorities, whether for-profit prisons or state agencies, or companies that don't do business with the state (see this piece), as integral parts of the body. They cannot be removed or withheld for punishment,  or because it's inconvenient, or even (in the context of state services like arrest and imprisonment) because it costs money. This is the power of the ADA.

WARNING - VERY DISTURBING DEPICTIONS OF ABUSE

This is what happens when the prison becomes the default first-line of care for people with serious mental health issues. This is what happens with prison guards grow up in a culture demeaning people with disabilities. This is what happens when you feed the cult of compliance. This is what happens when you crowd the prisons to overflowing in the name of the war on drugs.

You get guards inventing the sadistic "retard olympics" for their amusement, as alleged in the following lawsuit from a former prisoner with bipolar disorder. Here's the gist:

 [Hicks] claims that jail guards staged the "Retard Olympics" on several occasions at the York County Prison from 2008 through 2013.
     He claims that he and other inmates were subjected to "events" that included:
     being choked to the point of unconsciousness before pressure was released;
     being punched in the arms and legs until their limbs were numb;
     being punched repeatedly in the legs with the goal of inflicting a "dead leg," which had no sensation and prevented walking;
     being punched in the shoulders to see if prisoners could take the blow without falling;
     having inmates wrestle each other until an officer decided there was a winner;
     forced consumption of food to make prisoners sick and vomit, including drinking a gallon of milk in one hour, eating an entire spoonful of cinnamon, snorting spicy ramen noodle flavoring powder, snorting crushed hard candy, eating entire pieces of fruit, skin and all, drinking a bottle of water containing pepper spray foam from prison security supplies, and drinking a concoction known as "Mystery Soup" containing olives that had been left unrefrigerated for several weeks, mixed with Windex or similar cleaning supplies.

This is obviously an extreme case, but I contend that other kinds of casual ableist depictions of people with disabilities as objects for amusement feeds into this model of torture.

This is obviously an extreme case, but I contend that other kinds of casual ableist depictions of people with disabilities as objects for amusement feeds into this model of torture.
Welcome to Down syndrome awareness month.
Next week is Mental Illness awareness week
October 10 is World Mental Health day

Are you feeling more aware now? This is what happens when people with disabilities are objectified.