THREAD: #FreeThemAll is raising needed awareness & action to stop #COVID19 from harming people incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. This should also apply to what's happening in large psychiatric hospitals and congregate facilities, where folks are also not free to leave. 1/

Last month I interviewed @mabsegrest, author of the new book Administrations of Lunacy, launching today with @thenewpress. Mab talks about how the asylum and the prison system have always gone hand in hand as two sides of a carceral system that underpins the American state. 2/

Many people think that what goes on in psych hospitals is benign. Sure, psych hospitals are not prisons. But both are understaffed, unsanitary, and filled w/ violence -- seclusion, restraint, & solitary confinement. Not surprisingly, #COVID19 is ripping through both systems. 3/

Survivors & legal activists who've been fighting abuse and neglect in psychiatric facilities and institutions since way before this pandemic, tell me that #COVID19 is only magnifying ongoing mismanagement & mistreatment of staff & of course residents who, again, can't leave. 4/

This pandemic has suddenly made it possible to provide housing, care, and social supports in settings other than large, dangerous, congregate facilities. Community supports and housing have never been luxuries. With #COVID19, it's no longer possible to deny their NECESSITY. 5/