Treating Prisoners Right
Henry here today. The Canadian Press reported yesterday that Glen Race who is charged with three cross border killings is getting sicker without his medication. He is being held in a prison in New York and apparently not being treated for his paranoid schizophrenia. He is not getting appropriate medication and in addition he is not receiving any psychiatric treatment.
Apparently, under state law, prisoners have to request medication or appear to be a danger to himself or others before being forced to take drugs. Like a lot of schizophrenics I met in the hospital, he has an aversion to taking drugs.
In the good old days of Dickensian horror, there was no medication for such people, so the preferred treatment was to chain them to a wall and sometimes try to beat the evil spirits out of them for good measure. While not quite at that level, it seems to me the NY authorities are running out of options. Perhaps they will need to clean out a cell with the rings on the wall and the straw on the floor, but we hope not.
It is mind boggling to me that autocratic minds can get so locked into some kind of political correctness that someone would be allowed to suffer the way this poor retch is suffering for want of simple medication. Of course, prison doesn’t cure anyone, but this seems ridiculous.
It brings up a picture of the fat, overstuffed, and over satisfied autocrat following the letter of the law while someone sufferers and possibly kills himself or someone else. How things have improved in the modern age.