***For Immediate Release***
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
Contact: Magdalena Cazarez
Communications Director
Office: (402) 438-8853 Ext 119
Cell: (402) 504-0074
mcazarez@neappleseed.org
Ensuring access to adequate mental health care for incarcerated people in Nebraska
A humane and civil approach toward a sustainable prison reform.
LINCOLN – Today, the Nebraska Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights gathered for a public meeting to examine the Nebraska prison system regarding mental health services. Nebraska Appleseed sat on the panel, Legal and Advocates, to discuss civil rights concerns facing incarcerated Nebraskans with mental health conditions, including access to health care, impacts of solitary confinement on mental health, and more. Our Economic Justice Staff Attorney, Ken Smith, said in his testimony to the Nebraska Committee:
“Much of what we have learned about the challenges facing the large population of mentally ill people incarcerated in Nebraska should be a pivotal part of the larger conversation around reforming Nebraska’s prison system.”
“The lack of access to adequate mental health care in our prison system is a violation of human, civil, and constitutional rights and must be addressed through sustainable, systemic reform. Truly comprehensive reform will require not only restructuring the mental health care system in our prisons, but also rethinking the way people with mental illness interact with the criminal justice system at every level, from charging decisions and sentencing on the front end through re-entry support and reintegration on the back end.”
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Thanks Ken Smith for your comments on this subject. Alot of great information compacted into a easily understandable statement. Also I was glad to see Senator Steve Lathrop present who is my state legislator and has done alot of work on prison reform.
I have worked with many exprisoners and the way they were treated in prisons were terrible. Even after I had called doctors and got the doctors to call the jails or prisons saying this person needed certain mental health drugs, they still were not given to the prisoner. So these guards or prison officials ignore doctors strong advice and let the prisoner decompensate. It is not right. They got a prison or jail sentence and have to serve it, but they did not get the DEATH PENALTY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!