Mental health

May 1, 2015 4

Excited Delirium, the Use of Force and the Death of Natasha McKenna

Update: Taser’s role in the rise of excited delirium diagnoses is an important part of this story. H/T to @SusieMadrak Last week, police in Fairfax County, Virginia, said a medical examiner determined that a 37 year old mentally ill black woman named Natasha McKenna died of ‘excited delirium’ in February after being tased and restrained by six armored sheriff’s deputies. I had never heard of excited delirium before, so I dug into it a little bit. The American Psychiatric [Continue reading]

New York City Department of Correction's Tank

April 30, 2015 1

Against Reform: Beyond Rikers Island

There are a couple of things I want to say about the 10 reform bills proposed in the NYC Council this week targeting the Department of Corrections. First, as I mentioned in my rundown, even if these bills pass, they will be meaningless without rigorous enforcement and oversight by the council. Much of the problem here is not that the city lacks regulations over its jails — it’s that the Department of Corrections seems to follow its own rules and break theirs with impunity. For [Continue reading]

April 30, 2015 14

Medical Examiner Says Mentally Ill Inmate Natasha McKenna Died of Excited Delirium

UPDATE: More on ‘excited delirium’ and its diagnosis in in-custody deaths involving the use of force. According to the Fairfax County Police, a medical examiner has ruled that 37-year old inmate Natasha McKenna died of ‘excited delirium’ while in custody last February. Natasha suffered from schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, and was arrested on January 26th after she called 911 to report she had been assaulted. After taking her to the hospital, police realized they had [Continue reading]

April 23, 2015 6

Corizon Health Staff on Rikers Island File Federal Labor Complaint Over Dangerous Work Environment

According to the NY Daily News, a group of medical staffers from New York City jail medical contractor Corizon Health Services filed a federal labor complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on April 11th for Corizon’s failure to protect them from inmate assaults. From the Daily News: The staffers charge that the nation’s largest jail health care provider repeatedly failed to protect them from dangerous inmates who were never properly restrained or labeled [Continue reading]

March 30, 2015 5

New solitary confinement unit plagued by old problems on Rikers Island

At the beginning of March, New York City’s Board of Correction released a preliminary report on Rikers Island’s controversial new isolation facility, the Enhanced Supervision Housing Unit (ESHU). The $14.8 million ESHU was proposed to house 250 of Rikers’ so-called “most dangerous” inmates– a small minority of the prison population that officials claim is responsible for the majority of inmate violence. Amid federal, state and municipal investigations and a [Continue reading]

March 19, 2015 2

NYC DOC withholding records on violence against developmentally disabled juvenile inmate: lawsuit

A lawsuit filed on March 12th in the eastern district of New York claims that the New York City Department of Corrections (DOC) withheld important records from a federally-mandated disability advocate after they learned guards had brutally attacked a developmentally disabled juvenile inmate at the Robert N. Davoren Complex on Rikers Island. [Continue reading]

February 23, 2015 0

Florida plans to rebid and revamp troubled prison medical contracts

Florida’s newly-minted corrections chief Julie Jones has announced that her department will rebid $1.4 billion worth of private contracts to provide healthcare to approximately 100,000 inmates across the state. The majority of those contracts are held by the nation’s largest and most controversial prison medical provider, Corizon Health Services. Another private provider, Wexford Health Sources, will have its contracts put up for bidding as well. Under those agreements, Florida was [Continue reading]

February 20, 2015 2

Virginia woman dies in custody after being tasered, placed in restraints and anti-spit hood

On February 3rd, a 5’3″, 130 pound Virginia woman was killed after six deputies tased her before locking her in restraints with an anti-spitting hood over her head. Natasha McKenna, who was 37 years old and suffered from schizophrenia from a young age, went into cardiac arrest before ever leaving the jail and later died at the hospital. McKenna called 911 on January 25th to report she had been assaulted. After she was taken to the hospital for an examination, police realized they [Continue reading]

February 20, 2015 0

Montana legislature debuts bill prohibiting solitary confinement for minors, seriously mentally ill

A bill introduced in the Montana House of Representatives this week would curb the use of isolation in state prisons. The Montana Solitary Confinement Reform Act (or House Bill 490) was introduced by Democrat Jenny Eck and would ban solitary confinement for people under the age of 18 and those with severe mental illness. It would also introduce due process and appeal measures for inmates facing solitary and require weekly mental health evaluations for isolated inmates. Over much of the past [Continue reading]

February 18, 2015 1

Report: Incarcerated people more likely to suffer from chronic illness and infectious disease than public

The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics released a new report (PDF) this month on the health of incarcerated people in state and federal lock-ups from 2011-12. The study focused on both prisoners (i.e. people serving longer sentences) and jail inmates (i.e. people awaiting trial or serving shorter sentences), and found they were not only more likely to have had chronic medical conditions and/or infectious disease than the general population, but were also often denied prescription medication [Continue reading]

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