Thousands of jails across the country are sheltering a wave of inmates serving time while suffering from illnesses ranging from depression to schizophrenia.
In Baton Rouge, 25 inmates died from 2012-2016, at least five of whom were diagnosed with a serious mental illness or showed signs of one. Those deaths in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison make it the face of a paradigm shift facing prisons, Reuters reports in an investigative report on the parish prison.
Part of the transition is because of plunging numbers housed in psychiatric inpatient treatment centers nationwide, which fell from 471,000 in 1970 to 170,000 by 2014.
In Louisiana, the fallout exacerbated after former Gov. Bobby Jindal shuttered or privatized a network of public hospitals that provided medical and psychiatric care to the accused.
The East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the jail, blamed most deaths on drug use or “poor health and pre-existing conditions,” while noting Louisiana has long ranked low on public health metrics.
However, a private consultant hired to assess treatment found the parish prison was understaffed, with just 61% of the psychiatric staff hours found in comparable jails. Isolation units had been transformed into de facto inpatient mental health wards and were found inadequate for the most unstable mentally ill.
All of the five who died in the midst of mental health crises had been prescribed medication to treat mental illness, but the situation in Baton Rouge is just one example of how local jails struggle to treat the masses of mentally ill filling its cells. Read the full story.
