Inmate deaths unnoticed

The recent deaths of two inmates in Maine’s county jails went relatively unnoticed this summer, even though these deaths bring the total in the last five years to 19. Wednesday, two more inmates came near to death when their hangings were thwarted in the Penobscot County jail. Just two weeks ago, the Portland Press Herald reported the suicide of an inmate at the York County Jail. Earlier in the summer a Hancock County jail inmate died of a drug overdose.

Of particular note is that today’s attempted suicides occurred at the Penobscot County Jail; the very jail that has been touted as a model for the rest of Maine because of its written agreement with the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services. A September report faults Penobscot County for the death of an inmate for alcohol withdrawal last year. Six months ago, the Disability Rights Center issued a report on that jail noting that there was little likelihood that suicidal inmates would inform jail staff of their intentions, as the treatment for suicidality at PCJ was to be stripped of your clothing and placed in a bare cell.

Unfortunately, the fault does not lie entirely with Penobscot County Jail. All of Maine’s jails are struggling with overcrowding, underfunding, increasing numbers of inmates with serious health problems (including mental illness and substance abuse) and difficulty responding to their new status as the primary provider of mental health and substance abuse services in their communities – something for which they were never trained or funded.

These additional deaths come just weeks after the Bureau of Justice Statistics named Maine the state with the fastest rate of growth in the population of inmates anywhere in the nation. It also follows three years of media and legislative attention to the plight of inmates in Maine.

Why have the deaths of 19 young men failed to spark pubic outrage? Where are the legislative committees calling for reform? Where are the local citizens crying for change in the institutions in their neighborhoods where young lives are lost? How many will die before there is enough concern and outrage to bring relief to our jails?

Colloquial terms for incarceration, like “sent away” and “up the river” are evidence of our commitment to consigning inmates to the status of “people who deserve what they get”, i.e., “if you don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime” and, “lock them up and throw away the key.” But, these easy phrases ignore the devastating costs of our failed policies:

. We have the highest rate of incarceration anywhere in the world. One in every 11 males in this country will be incarcerated. With these rates, the inmate who hangs himself could be your brother, son, nephew.

? Nationwide spending on prisons was the fastest growing budget item in nearly every State in the 1990s. Some states (Connecticut, for example) now spend more on jails and prisons than they spend on education. In the era of “no child left behind”, it is ironic that we spend more on imprisonment than education.

? More than 12,000 children in this country are in the juvenile justice system and in state custody because parents were not able to access treatment for their child’s mental illness or substance use disorder. Those in the juvenile justice system will, in all probability, enter the adult correctional system, not because they are criminals, but because we failed to provide adequate treatment to them.

? Overwhelming numbers of inmates are people who are ill – people with substance abuse problems and/or mental illness. Twenty-five percent of prison inmates and up to 50 percent of jail inmates are people with mental illness. Often these inmates are arrested for non-violent crimes, crimes that could have been prevented if adequate treatment was available.

? The number of inmates in Maine has outpaced all projections – causing a crisis in our prison system, in our jails, and for taxpayers and legislators who must find the dollars to keep them open.

Instead of providing needed, appropriate, and modern treatment for people with mental illness and those with addictions, jails and prisons have become our de facto treatment centers. There are eight times as many people with mental illness in jail and prison as there are in psychiatric hospitals. The economic and social consequences of our current policies are enormous. The U.S. Department of Justice admits that for every $100 million state legislatures spend on new prison construction, they are committing the taxpayers to spend $1.6 billion over the next three decades to operate the new facilities.

Moreover, the average cost of keeping a state prisoner for a year in 1990 was $15,604; the average cost in 1995 was $22,000 a year. In Maine in 1990, the Department of Corrections budget was $64,311,056. In 1999 it was $83,113,317. New jails are under construction or contemplated in Maine in Sagadahoc, Waldo, Lincoln, and Somerset counties – each costing millions. A new multi-million dollar jail opened in York county last month. The new Maine State Prison in Warren, which opened this year, was built with capacity for 10 years. That prison is now full.

Maine’s leadership in health care this year has drawn national attention. The governor’s universal health care program, Dirigo Health, is evidence of what can happen when we work together to understand and address a serious problem. Our outrage about citizens without health insurance and over the rising cost of insurance moved this state to take action.

We need to be as outraged about policies that lead to incarceration instead of treatment. We need to be as outraged that conditions in our public institutions are deadly to those living in them. And, we need to mourn the unnecessary deaths of 19 men. When will we care deeply enough about inmate deaths to do something to stop them?

Carol Carothers is executive director of NAMI Maine. (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill)