Innocent, but Behind Bars Anyway

GALLMAN, Miss. — He had not been accused of a crime,

but Curtis Brown spent 10 of his last days in jail. Suffering from severe schizophrenia, he was jailed here because there was no room at the state mental hospital, where he had been committed by his family.

With authorities neglecting his deteriorating condition, the 47-year-old Brown starved to death in the drunk tank of the county jail, 30 miles south of Jackson, the state’s capital, according to court documents. During a psychotic episode, he had refused to eat.

“He . . . appeared like a victim of Auschwitz,” said Dr. Steve Hayne, the state pathologist who examined Brown’s body.

The case illustrates a growing crisis for the mentally ill in Mississippi and other states where psychiatric facilities are scarce. Most hospitals here do not have beds for the mentally ill, particularly those without insurance. The state’s two public mental hospitals are overcrowded, with severely ill patients waiting up to four months for a bed.

Historically, sheriffs in the state’s 82 counties have been required by local judges to use their small jails as holding cells for the mentally ill until a hospital bed can be found. Sometimes it takes months. Only a few of the jails have medical clinics. Some jails are vermin-infested, with overflowing plumbing and filth-encrusted toilets, according to a 1993 Justice Department review that was prompted by a spate of jail suicides.

Sheriffs and jail administrators agree that jails are improper places for mental patients. “We’re just a dumping ground,” said Lincoln County Sheriff Lynn Boyte. “What these people need is help.”

Boyte and other sheriffs around the state say that if they refuse patients, the consequences could be even worse. In April, a Jackson man sent home to await space at the mental hospital lost control of his car and careened down a busy street, severely injuring two people. The incident, caused by his impaired mental condition, cast a spotlight on the dearth of psychiatric facilities in the state.

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Jailing the mentally ill when there is no hospital bed available may

seem archaic, but it is not rare. A 1992 report by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill found that 29% of jails nationwide sometimes incarcerate mentally ill people who have no criminal charges against them. A spokeswoman for the organization said recently that the practice has not declined since then.

The study found that 75% of Mississippi jails had held mentally ill people without criminal charges, second only to Kentucky, where 81% of jails reported the practice.

Mississippi sheriffs complain that the problem is escalating.

Recent research by the Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union found that 220 mentally ill people had been held in the state’s jails during a one-year period in 1995 and 1996 because there were no beds available at the two public mental hospitals, which have 1,200 psychiatric beds between them.

“The fact that Mississippi continues to hold people in jail simply because they are mentally ill is unacceptable and inhumane. And the practice should be stopped immediately,” said Mississippi ACLU director David Ingebretsen. He said the experience of being held in jail often exacerbates the illness.

The Mississippi ACLU is considering a lawsuit to force the state to stop holding the mentally ill in jails.

“It clearly sends a message that these people are being punished for a sickness,” said Linda Temple, whose brother is a Mississippi mental patient.

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Temple, an aide to a federal judge, was shocked at what happened when she was forced to commit her schizophrenic brother, John M. White, earlier this year. White, 50, lived with relatives in Mississippi. He had stopped taking his medication and had become violent and irrational. After a proceeding in civil court, he was sent to a jail, Temple said.

“There was no psychiatric care, no psychiatric medication,” she said. Only after Temple pressured officials was her brother moved to the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield. It took 45 days.

In the Copiah County Detention Center in Gallman, where Curtis Brown was held before his death, new jail administrator Shirley Givens said that her often-overcrowded facility is not equipped to handle the needs of the mentally ill.

“The jailers know how to handle criminals. No jail is a place for the mentally ill,” she said.

The one-story structure was built in the 1970s, and it is modern compared to many Mississippi jails. It is certified to hold 58 prisoners. But its population sometimes climbs to as many as 120, Givens said.

Givens was not the jail’s administrator four years ago when Brown was brought here. Copiah County officials, while denying many of the allegations against them, recently settled a lawsuit with Brown’s estate for an undisclosed amount.

But Brown’s sister, Fannie Mae Pendleton, says the lawsuit was not filed for money. Rather, she said, “I want them to know they can’t treat people like that.”

Brown, who suffered from schizophrenia for 27 years, was committed in 1993 during a severe psychotic episode. He had become uncontrollable, removed his clothes and ran down the highway.

Jail records show that Brown was booked into the jail April 17, 1993.

According to court documents, another prisoner, David Newell, said he recalled when Brown was brought in, his arms tied behind his back with an extension cord apparently put there by his family.

Clearly disturbed, Brown stripped off his clothes and sat in the cell naked, covered with his own feces. Already emaciated, he would take only occasional bites of food and seemed to shake violently when he drank fluids.

Jail officials and other prisoners tried to force-feed Brown, without success. But when Newell told the former jail administrator that he was worried about Brown’s condition, the jail administrator said, “When the black . . . gets hungry enough, he’ll eat,” Newell testified.

When jail officials called paramedics to the hospital to examine Brown on April 25, the paramedics recommended a transfer to a local hospital. But the doctor said the hospital would “not take patients like that.” Another county official made repeated calls to have Brown transferred to the state mental hospital, but was told no space was available.

Copiah County Administrator Susan Keyes said that Brown was already in desperate shape when he arrived at the jail and that the jail had done everything it could for him. “You’re sitting here with your hands tied, and can’t get the medical facilities to accept him,” she said.

Four days after paramedics recommended Brown be hospitalized, he was transferred to the state mental hospital, so weak he had to be carried out. He died there on April 30.