(Aug. 28, 2014) Kyle, 24, was kept in solitary confinement for nearly six months at the San Diego Central Jail while waiting to get into treatment for his schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to the San Diego City Beat (“Lost in the criminal justice system,” Aug. 27).
“Five-and-a-half months. No medication, in his own cell in isolation,” his mother, Sarah, said. “All he did was sleep.”
Kyle has been in and out of treatment facilities since he was 18. But last June he was charged with assaulting and verbally threatening a police officer nearly a week after walking away from a psychiatric hospital. The encounter was his first with law enforcement and it landed him in jail.
Even though Kyle was diagnosed with a severe mental illness, he waited six months behind bars before a judge declared he was incompetent to stand trial and ordered him into psychiatric treatment at Patton, California’s largest public hospital. He still waited another 70 days in jail before a bed opened up and he was transferred to the hospital.
Kyle is not alone in this type of mistreatment. “Statewide, more than 200 inmates who’ve been declared incompetent to stand trial are waiting in jail,” notes the San Diego City Beat.
Sarah told the City Beat that she hopes the right outpatient treatment program will help her son stay in treatment and out of jail.
Sarah's hope reminds us that San Diego cannot afford to wait to implement Laura’s Law for Kyle and the countless others like him who are also languishing in jails and prisons. Just this week Placer County voted to implement the assisted outpatient treatment law and in the last two months, Orange and San Francisco counties have voted to implement while Los Angeles has expanded its pilot program.
Kyle, his family and everyone else with severe mental illness who is boucing between jail and treatment cannot wait any longer.
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