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The Idaho Statesman
November 25, 2002
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
OP-ED
By E. Fuller Torrey and Mary Zdanowicz
In Coeur d�Alene, Daniel Stoddard, diagnosed with schizophrenia, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for murdering his stepfather.
Our prisons have become psychiatric hospitals. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 16 percent of inmates have severe mental illnesses.
The Los Angeles County Jail is the nation�s largest psychiatric hospital.
Idaho�s prison system holds four times more people with mental illnesses than its remaining public hospitals. Ada County Jail houses about as many as State Hospital South, the largest state psychiatric hospital.
It wasn�t always this way. In 1880, less than 1 percent of inmates had psychiatric disorders.
Until the 1960s, most were in hospitals. Then we discharged thousands — reducing the number by more than 90 percent — but failed to ensure that those discharged could get needed treatment in the community.
Many are now homeless or incarcerated.
Some commit minor crimes.
Others commit more deadly crimes. Like Daniel Stoddard.
Or George Tsebelis, who murdered Emily Hays, an Idaho State University art student.
Or Russell Weston, who killed two police officers in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
People with severe mental illnesses who take medication are no more violent than the general population.
People with severe mental illnesses, most off medication, commit approximately 1,000 homicides annually nationwide.
The exasperating majority of these tragedies could be prevented through medication compliance, but the majority of those refusing treatment have impaired awareness of their illness — they will not take medication voluntarily because they do not think they are sick.
Well-meaning civil libertarians have made it difficult in many states to treat people involuntarily until they commit a crime.
Legal remedies exist in other states to ensure medication compliance: conditional release from the hospital, outpatient commitment, and guardianship.
Idaho�s laws allow people to get help when they need treatment, but the state rarely uses such mechanisms, although studies show their effectiveness in reducing hospitalization, violence and incarceration
Reluctance to use available laws is usually rationalized as a defense of civil liberties.
But what kind of freedom is it to eat from a garbage can, as 28 percent of homeless mentally ill people do? Or to sit in a jail cell, screaming at the voices assailing you?
Herschel Hardin, a former director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, said it best: “The opposition to involuntary commitment and treatment betrays a profound misunderstanding of the principles of civil liberties. Medication can free victims from their illnesses ... and restore their dignity, their free will, and the meaningful exercise of their liberties.”
Prisons are no place for people with severe mental illnesses. Most jails do not provide adequate psychiatric services; more than one in five has no such services.
People like Daniel Stoddard deserve to get treatment before tragedy strikes, not to end up in prison as a punishment for a biological brain disease.
Let�s work to free the sickest of our citizens from the prisons of their minds, before they end up in the prisons of Idaho.
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