(July 31, 2014) Diego Dietche, a 26-year-old man with schizophrenia struggles to understand why he is behind bars, reports the Daily Astorian (“Jail struggles to house mentally ill,” July 25, 2014).
“Undressed and covered in human waste,” Dietche was arrested in June for violating a stalking order.
But he won’t be transported to a mental health facility for at least another month – which is how long correctional officials estimate it will take for a bed to become available, said Deputy Stephen Johnson, who works at the Clatsop County Jail where Dietche is being held. “Right now, the mentally ill issue is worse than I have ever seen it. There's nowhere to put them and not a lot of options."
But it’s hard to get mentally ill inmates out of the jail and into a treatment facility.
“Once they get in here, it really becomes difficult to unturn the key,” said Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin. “We have to go through the process of finding them a bed somewhere.”
Other employees of the jail also raised concerns. “The folks who are in jail who are suffering from mental illness are not getting the treatment that they need,” Shelley Morgan, Interim Jail Supervisor told the Daily Astorian. “It's a jail. It's not a mental health facility to treat folks. And while they are here waiting to get treatment, they're decompensating for days, weeks, months before they get back in front of a judge to get an evaluation ordered which takes, at minimum, 30 days."
Bergin is tired of his staff working as defacto mental health workers. “My deputies cannot be the caretakers for these individuals,” he said. “We need to get the mentally ill better help that they truly need from doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists, to get them back on their meds or off of whatever drug they may be on."
In the meantime, while waiting to get treatment for his mental illness, Dietche will continue to decompensate in his jail cell, covered in human waste.
For more about the treatment of prisoners with mental illness, Read our study, “The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails: A State Survey.”
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