Monday, December 3, 2012

The Mentally Challenged in Solitary

Over 60% of the inmates in solitary confinement in America are mentally ill people. More than 80% of prisoners in "shu" are black. Solitary confinement has made some sane people "crazy." Now there are lawsuits over the loss of sanity by persons who are tortured this way. See an excerpt from an Atlantic article below about an inmate, Jack Powers, who lost his mind and started self-mutilating after being sentenced to solitary confinement.

Dog Justice for the Mentally Ill

An American Gulag: Descending into Madness at Supermax, by Andrew Cohen
A detailed new federal lawsuit alleges chronic abuse and neglect of mentally ill prisoners at America’s most famous prison.

... [Inmate Jack Powers] sits today in Supermax. Powers had amputated his fingers, a testicle, his scrotum and his earlobes, has cut his Achilles tendon, and had tried several times to kill himself. Those tattoos you see? Powers had none until 2009, when he started mutilating with a razor and carbon paper. He did much of this — including biting off his pinkie and cutting skin off his face — in the Control Unit at ADX while prison officials consistently refused to treat his diagnosed mental illness. Rules are rules, prison officials told him, and no prisoners in that unit were to be given psychotropic medicine no matter how badly they needed it.



Jesus Christ's Christmas in Solitary
At Christmastime it seems so cold
to lock sick people in the hole
Mental illness is their crime
Over a million doing hard time

We sing carols about Emanuel
and His blessed Mother Mary
But Jesus' left the manger now
He's locked in solitary

"Whatever you do to the least of these,
you do also to me"
Christ shivers in His lonely cell
Every sick prisoner is He

What will we do to rescue our Lord
and save Him from His plight?
God gave His Son to restore us all
Let's treat His brethren right

by Mary Neal (all rights reserved)

Read Cohen's entire article called "An American Gulag: Descending into Madness at Supermax" at The Atlantic's link below:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/06/an-american-gulag-descending-into-madness-at-supermax/258323/

My poem, "Jesus Christ's Christmas in Solitary," is published at this HubPages link http://goo.gl/9xbPQ . The poem and article regard the horror of solitary confinement and was published in  December 2010 to urge your help to decriminalize mental illness and end the loneliness of prison isolation, particularly for sick people. Many prisoners are physically sick, also. The governor of Mississippi released the Scott sisters from their long incarceration in 2010 because one sister needed a kidney transplant that the other sister could provide (the state had denied them the surgery as prisoners). The Scott sisters were serving double life sentences for a theft conviction they denied having done and had already served 15 years. God said the merciful shall inherit mercy, and the governor was kind to release them. I wish he had pardoned the Scott sisters or that the new governor would. You may be able to access more of my poetry by browsing Google for "Mary Neal's 21st Century Slave Songs."

I am America's most censored person because I advocate to decriminalize mental illness and expose the murder of my mentally, physically disabled brother who was killed while under secret arrest in Memphis Shelby County Jail in 2003. I also expose The (Johnnie) Cochran Firm fraud against its clients (usually blacks) who the law firm often pretends to represent after police violence while working to reduce or eliminate any payout by government entities. When I went to HubPages to retrieve a link to my JESUS CHRIST'S CHRISTMAS IN SOLITARY poem, I discovered that my profile page says I only have five articles printed at HubPages instead of the 16 articles I actually published there. Recently, HubPages was merged or was bought by Glam, and it only shows the articles with high ratings. My "Jesus Christ's Christmas in Solitary" is a seasonal piece, which affects ratings. I hope you will access it and share it with others this Season. I also hope that HubPages will change the status on my profile page to say the five articles that show represent  "a selection of" my articles instead of  "all." That is misleading.

See all 16 of my HubPages articles listed at this JUSTICE GAGGED blog link
http://justicegagged.blogspot.com/2012/08/mary-neals-hubpages-archive.html  - There would be 17 if HubPages editors had not unpublished my article that reveals the decrepit state of the juvenile justice system, called "Juvenile Justice: Kids 4 Cash" at this lin http://marylovesjustice.blogspot.com/2011/03/juvenile-justice-kids-4-cash.html  which I republished in my MaryLovesJustice blog.

I started my EXPOSED: FREE SPEAK BLOG because CoIntelPro took over my Care2 website called Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill at http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/aimi    First, the cyberstalkers would surreptitiously remove posts that my 300 members and I published. Then it became a struggle to publish anything that exposed prison profiteering, wrongful executions, child abuse in correctional facilities, and brutality and murders of mentally ill persons, whether incarcerated or not. Visit "Exposed: Free Speak Blog" at this link http://FreeSpeakBlog.blogspot.com  - One thing I noticed since becoming an advocate for the mentally ill is that Caucasian patients are killed and brutalized as prisoners or by police during lunacy arrests just as blacks and others are. However, when it becomes impossible to cover up Caucasians' deaths, their families are awarded wrongful death compensation. As a black family, the media helps to hide Larry Neal's murder. The Cochran Firm, which we contracted with as our wrongful death attorneys, helped to cover up Larry's death. It appears that even the federal government became an accessory after the fact. I am so disappointed. Racism is like a mental disease.

Related articles
May God have mercy on Jack Powers and all inmates in solitary confinement this Christmas and every day - some of them for over 40 years.

Thinking of prisoners and their families, especially sick inmates in solitary during the Holidays,
I am Mary Neal

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