14,
May 2016 Florida’s Guantanamo
The
New Yorker magazine recently published a shocking expose on the utter brutality
of prison guards at the Dade
Correctional Institution in Florida. Mentally ill prisoners have been subjected
to savage beatings, scalding showers and severe food shortages. A blanket of
silence has gripped inmates and health professionals who fear brutal reprisals
for speaking out. A courageous, psychotherapist and whistleblower, George
Mallinckrodt lost his job after reporting such abuses.
Lacking adequate medical care for the mentally
ill, prisons have become the de facto mental health institutions. Florida is
particularly prone to such abuses given that it allocates less money per capita
than any other state with the exception of Idaho. Most of the health
professionals violated their sworn code of ethics choosing to ignore the abuses;
a few that spoke out were maligned as "hug-a-thugs," and suddenly
found themselves unprotected and isolated. A near starvation diet was often
imposed on inmates who complained. One
prisoner, Darren Rainey, a severely schizophrenic inmate, was locked in a
shower stall and exposed to scalding water of 180 degrees which burned 90
percent of his body. No one has been charged for his brutal murder.
Mallinckrodt chronicles the abuses in his recent book, ‘Getting Away with
Murder’.
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