My son, who has an autism spectrum disorder, spend much of his first several months of prison life locked away in solitary confinement - referred to by inmates as “the hole”.
He’d tell you, as he told me while going through the experience, that some of the inmates in these “units” throw or smear feces, urinate on the floor, and make life miserable not only for themselves, but for everyone around them. He was once placed in one “hole” that still had human waste on the walls, the door, and the floor.
My son spent many periods of up to 45 days at one time in such an environment. Now, he didn’t smear feces or urinate on the cell floor, but he certainly saw what was going on around him in these units.
I’ve concluded, after listening to my son describe his last year and a half in prison, that the reason for this is NOT that these inmates enjoy this sort of activity, rather, they are left sitting in a solitary cell for 23 out of 24 hours each and every day, for days, weeks and even months on end, and are mentally ill, living this terrible existence without treatment, being given medications that are either sadly outdated, inappropriate, or not made available to them at all. Whether they are even yet diagnosed, there they sit. Others can and do become “stir crazy“ after weeks on end in the “hole“, a term coined back in the days of early England, when the jails were referred to as “stirs”.
They are powerless to submit their grievances, punished often times if they do, and living in this environment, where every right has been stripped away from them, it’s sometimes the one way and the only way left to express their anger, hurt, betrayal or outright misery, whether that misery is of their own making or arriving from underlying illness, diagnosed or not.
Rather than feeding these inmates “nutriloaf” why aren’t we treating their illness, hearing their grievances, giving them more modern and appropriate medications? Has anyone asked why this behavior exists and why it seems to be ever-present?
Nutriloaf is just another way for the DOC to portray themselves as thoughtfully addressing some of the problems that exist in their facilities ~ but yet again they are simply disguising one of a range of highly inappropriate punishment of the mentally ill.
Although they can tell you (and we have to take their word) that these inmates, after a time, change their bad behavior, so did the patients who used to be locked in cells at our very own Retreat! That does happen sometimes of it’s own accord, and many mental health professionals should be able to speak to why that happens. How many of them will tell you it’s in the Nutriloaf!
Here some of us sit with cabin fever after a long winter, able to move about, shop, relax, watch tv, read, or listen to the radio - imagine sitting in a cold cement cell for an entire winter, a cell already perhaps covered in feces and urine when you first arrive - and tell me that your mind wouldn’t break at some point. Some of these inmates have no other way to ask for the help they desperately need. It’s not a simple matter, when sent to prison, to ask for help; it takes filling out forms, praying that a CO delivers them, - and even if someone was listening, there just isn’t any meaningful treatment to be given.
There’s is a better way than the “nutriloaf” treatment; it’s called “mental health” treatment! It’s all about the cost of carrots, the availability of carrots and all the other ingredients they’re using; the new one size fits all “cure” for mental illness .
I say Nuts to nutriloaf!