On solitary confinement

Dear editor,

Most people have never seen the inside of a jail cell.  I’ve worked as a psychiatric nurse in a prison ward “for the criminally insane” to large county jails and everything in between.  Some had actual mental health units and with the best of intentions and committed staff the care was abysmal at best.   

I once saw a person in Albuquerque in jail that I had seen in a  psychiatric hospital and he started sobbing when he saw me because he felt so humiliated in his orange jumpsuit.

In past op-eds I  pleaded for public hospital beds and my thoughts are stronger than ever about this in Las Cruces. We are at a crossroads to make appropriate care available or place people with a serious mental illness in jail and “throw away the key.”

District attorneys can can make a huge difference  in supporting a humane solution to people coming before them. There are two females running for the office: Shaharazad Booth and Ramona Martinez. Both have voiced that jails are not meant to be hospitals. When you vote, think of a mother of a seriously mentally ill person who is in jail.  That mother is pleading to get someone to listen to her to get records, appropriate medications, or constantly worried about the neglect or bullying that often happens to vulnerable people in correctional settings.

Many cities are working on change to stop making prisons and jails “the largest mental health facility.” We need to be one of them.

Pamela Field

Las Cruces