(Aug. 11, 2014) Travis Fendley, 24, confessed to killing his grandmother the day after he was released from jail, but family members say non-treatment for his schizophrenia while he was incarcerated is to blame for the tragedy (“Judge: Mentally ill Fresno man will stand trial for killing grandmother,” the Fresno Bee, July 31).
As a result of "bizarre" behavior, Fendley was committed to an emergency psychiatric evaluation by police following his confession. While previously in jail, he was twice hospitalized for his psychiatric symptoms because he was not psychiatrically competent to stand trial. He has now been ordered to stand trial for murder in his 78-year-old grandmother’s death.
“He was sick and he needed help,” his aunt told the Bee. She and Fendley’s defense attorney said the killing could have been prevented had Fendley received proper medication before being released from jail.
The Treatment Advocacy Center in April published “The treatment of persons with mental illness in prisons and jails,” the first national survey of mental illness treatment practices behind bars. The study found there are now 10 times more individuals with severe psychiatric disease in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric beds, and many receive no treatment.
Fendley was a key figure in a 2013 Bee investigation of treatment provided to mentally ill inmates in the county’s jails. The report found that inmates with mental illness left the jails “in worse shape than when they were taken into custody” in Fresno County. The Treatment Advocacy Center study reached the same conclusion nationwide.
Jails and prisons were never intended to be mental health facilities. As long as they are used as such, tragedies such as the Fendley family experienced will remain common.
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