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Ok so I leave my job in a bit over a week working in the criminal justice system and have been dying for the day I get to talk mad shit about it. The day is here bitch (a thread)
So I worked at a nonprofit as a case worker in Florida for a year. I worked for people charged with a felony and diagnosed with a mental illness and court ordered to a state hospital for treatment
In Florida, it goes like this: a psychiatric evaluation is issued upon court order. This is where a psychiatrist will usually drop the “schizophrenia” diagnosis. Court says they can’t mentally proceed, they get sent off to a state hospital till the hospital says they can.
They can spend up to 5 years(!) in state hospital unless if deemed not guilty by reason of insanity, they could spend life. REMINDER: THIS IS NOT A SENTENCE. They can’t proceed to trial yet to determine that!
Although they almost always get time served, you’re spending way more time in these institutions than you would on a prison sentence
The reality is nearly all my clients were homeless, 99% men, majority of Black men, almost always diagnosed with schizophrenia but more commonly schizoaffective, bipolar type (‘schizophrenic’ hallucinations with manic & depressive episodes). This is no coincidence.
Many factors play a part into why the demographics are this way (including the diagnosis label) but for this thread we can talk about the race & class factor.
Do you know how many petty theft charges I saw? Being homeless is the ultimate crime in this country. Having an episode? Resisting arrest. Battery as a result of not being able to afford the insane price of treatment? ALL FELONIES
I cannot do this thread without talking about the role police play. NEVER CALL THE COPS ON SOMEONE HAVING AN EPISODE OR SOMEONE WHOS SUICIDAL. Police can and will arrest you for ANYTHING. And after one felony charge, you’ll spend your entire life in the system
It’s no coincidence the discrimination tactics the court uses. I had one homeless white guy on a petty theft charge get a plea for one day of probation. Ive never seen a case like that again. The court picks and chooses who they wanna be nice to.
But most importantly basically the entire justice system including half the state hospitals in Florida are FOR PROFIT. This means the government gets paid a pretty penny per bed that is filled.
Prosecutors load up charges for this reason (+ others, but for another thread). the reality is, the prosecutor is the ruler in the court room, not the judge
State hospitals are so corrupt. They do nothing to treat them. They load them up on for profit drugs till they’re drooling. If you actually take the time to read their evaluations, you’ll see the intense trauma they had in their life. They need help. The system failed them.
private ones are even worse. One of them is run like a max security prison. The psychologist there deems people “competent to proceed” just to get them out of there because they can’t keep up w the amount of ppl coming in. They’re always at max capacity & want to keep it that way
It was my job to advocate for them but it was a near impossible task and extremely draining. No matter what I did, no matter how many letters I wrote to the judge, spoke with attorneys, there was no help I could ever do for them
The jail throws them out on the street without a place to live when they’re done with them. The public defenders have hundreds of clients and can’t keep up. It’s all a mess setting them up for failure
I’ve witnessed the most corrupt shit. Clients dying out of no where. I had a client locked up under the wrong name serving another guys sentence. Schizophrenia this, schizophrenia that. Deeming guys who don’t have a mental illness incompetent to proceed to fill a for profit bed
These institutions ruin people’s lives. The mental health and criminal justice system run hand and hand. Resources are defunded more and more every year so more people end up in jail- meaning government gets more $. Class war? Government makes a profit
Theres more than 8x more people in jail/prison with a mental illness than in state hospitals; and mass incarceration is only getting worse, meanwhile crime rates are not
Mental illness is a public health crisis in this country, no doubt. But the real crisis is how corrupt the government is. Witnessing this shit first hand was enough to turn me communist, real talk. & the system was drastically getting worse within my one year being there w COVID
I can go on and on about how the justice system works and way more into this with books that I read, but I wanted to give an authentic POV. This system cannot be reformed. It must go
