(A rebuttal to Director Thornell’s out-of-touch letter to the inmate population. A first-hand recent account.)
“My dad had just died and I felt like joining him. I went to medical and informed the guard that I felt like hurting myself. At first, he tried to talk me out of it by saying ‘It’s better here than there’ meaning the watch building. I insisted so he handcuffed me and I waited for a van to ” watch”.
At the watch building I was stripped out, put in a smock that didn’t close, so had to clamp my arms together to keep it from falling off. In the cell, all I was given were two blankets and a thin mattress. I was on constant watch for 3 days, which meant an officer was outside the cell looking at me all the time.
I did not see a mental health official until the 2nd day, and that was a nurse for a brief 10 minutes. Recreation was 30 minutes a day but only at 4:30 am. Water was from the faucet no cup. Food was only sandwiches, nothing hot and it was FREEZING in there. Third day was identical to the second. I then graduated to a 20-minute watch, and got clothes on the 4th day.
Throughout this ordeal, the only mental health official I saw was 10 minutes a day with no counseling, only questions….’You gonna hurt yourself?’. The next two days was 10 minute watch, then 5 minutes with my first book and my first hot meal.
After over a week of torture, I was unceremoniously dumped back at my Bay, without ever having any kind of counseling or seeing a psych person beyond a nurse. I finally saw a psychology person who could prescribe, more than two weeks after I first asked for help. The so-called counseling was abysmal. “