THE MINISTRY of National Security's plans for mentally ill prisoners to be separated from the general population at the St. Catherine Adult Correction Centre (SCACC) needs to be implemented throughout the prison system. The move, the ministry says, comes amid investigations into allegations of sexual assault against mentally ill inmates and its confirmation of one such case.
We would have thought that given the many reports of prisoner abuse over several years that this should have been long-established policy.
Studies here and elsewhere have long shown that the weak are particularly vulnerable to abuse in prisons. So alert prison officials should have long recognised the particular dangers confronting the mentally-impaired. Nevertheless, the plan for a larger inventory of medicines used to assist with the treatment of the mentally ill along with counselling and therapy is a step in the right direction. On the other hand, given the reality of mentally-impaired inmates being "lost" in the system for years, it is understandable that this would be but another area in which they have been neglected.
A 2003 report on the treatment of mentally ill in the United States found that many prisons leave inmates undertreated or not treated at all. Often,
prisoners cannot get appropriate care because of a shortage of qualified staff, lack of facilities, and prison rules that interfere with treatment.
The Human Rights Watch report documented how prisoners with mental illness are likely to be picked on, physically or sexually abused, and manipulated by other inmates.
At the best of times, it is extremely challenging to care for the mentally ill and the difficulties are significantly increased in prison. It is not difficult to see how prison warders who lack training in dealing with mental illness may not be able to distinguish between the prisoner who is disruptive or fails to obey an order because of illness and a prisoner who causes problems for other reasons.
So while the separation of inmates at the St. Catherine Adult Correctional Centre will go some way in mitigating the abuse, there still remains the question of how to treat them in an incarcerated environment.
The Correctional Services Department needs to move quickly to ensure that the mentally ill are not subject to similar abuse elsewhere in the prison system and to have them separated as has been done at the SCACC.
* THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
