In America mental health problems are treated with beatings and scalding water

Quote:

Darren Rainey, a 50-year-old man with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, was housed in the inpatient mental health unit at Florida’s Dade Correctional Institution while serving two years on a cocaine charge. According to a lawsuit filed by his estate, Rainey’s mental health problems sometimes led him to smear feces on himself and his cell, and he did so on the evening of June 23, 2012. Under normal procedures, the custody staff would have taken Rainey to the closest shower to be washed. Instead, it is alleged they took him to a more distant shower that was either altered or broken in such a way that correctional officers could set the temperature to scalding and Rainey could not shut the water off, control its temperature, or leave the shower until staff opened the door. A related lawsuit brought by Disability Rights Florida alleged in its complaint that staff at this institution had previously placed another inmate with mental health problems in the scalding shower to punish him. Nearly two hours later, according to the Rainey complaint, when the officers went to Retrieve Rainey, he was lying unresponsive on the floor of the shower. They called a nurse who discovered Rainey had no pulse and was not breathing. He had burns over 90 percent of his body, and his skin was hot/warm to the touch and slipped off when touched. Inmates told journalists that Rainey had angered corrections officers by defecating in his cell and refusing to clean up the mess. A psychotherapist who worked at the prison between 2008 and 2011 told the press that guards at the prison “taunted, tormented, abused, beat and tortured chronically mentally ill inmates on a regular basis.” Two years after Rainey’s death the police investigation remains pending and there is no report from the medical examiner. Settlement discussions are ongoing in consolidated lawsuits filed by Rainey’s estate for damages and by Disability Rights Florida for injunctive relief.

From the Human Rights Watch report: "CALLOUS AND CRUEL - Use of Force against Inmates with Mental Disabilities in US Jails and Prisons" available here: http://ift.tt/1e0h1Wg

As always it's noteworthy that many of the most abusive and violent people in prisons aren't convicted criminals but the people ostensibly there to guard the criminals. That's why in most developed countries prison and other detention facilities are designed not only to keep the detainees secure but also keep the guards from abusing them and the detainees from abusing each-other.

In America and many, many other countries little importance is placed upon the latter part which is completely counterproductive both in the short term because abusive guards lead to abusive detainees and in the long term when those hardened and brutalized people are released. Hence why people who have been in prison often come out in a far worse condition than when they entered.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1cuAnl3