NH, Always In the State Of Illegal Justice for decades!  Does Anyone give a damn?
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"In New Hampshire, rights matter more for some than for others when caring for the mentally ill, especially compared to a state like Colorado where lawmakers are spending millions to make sure mentally ill people who haven’t committed a crime are not locked up in jails, even for very brief holds. And even Massachusetts with its notorious Bridgewater State Hospital is shifting gears toward therapeutic rather than punitive treatment."

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

    By Nancy West
    March 28, 2018

Photo by Nancy West

The 4 holding cells pictured in the top left corner are "THERAPY BOOTHS."

"Andrew's attorney, Sandra Bloomenthal, Wrote: "He is held as a mental health patient without being in an accredited hospital, denied contact visits with his father, denied contact visits with his attorney, forced to wear prison clothing."

“He is locked down 23 hours a day. He has been tasered. The treatment he has received is cruel and unusual punishment without having been convicted of a crime and with no pending criminal process,” Bloomenthal wrote."

"Coulter, a longtime psychiatry nurse, was stunned, too, during her brief employment to see four telephone booth-sized cages on the unit used as "therapy booths."  Little therapy can happen under such circumstances, she said.  Some individuals have languished in the Secure Psychiatic Unit for years in the absence of criminal charges or adjudication, said Coutler."

"Coutlter was also concerned about a small number of mentally ill women housed in a separate section of SPU, all on the prison grounds. The State Prison for Men in Concord is about 200 over capacity at 1,412 inmates in units ranging from minimum to maximum security. SPU  has a population of 49."

NH Senator Kevin Avard said SPU, as it is often called, sounded like something out of a "horror movie."

“It sounds very tragic,” said Avard, who stopped to talk with family members and SPU critics after the hearing suggesting that accreditation would be a good start to make changes there.

A woman who asked not to be identified to the committee because she feared her nephew would face retaliation if it became known she was complaining about his treatment at SPU, said she worries about his safety there.

She told the committee that she is all he has for family. She said the officers would take away the possessions that he enjoys most to punish him and she wouldn’t say what those are in case it would identify him.She questioned why he should be shackled and imprisoned for being mentally ill.

Colorado’s Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a bill in May that will increase funding for community-based treatment. The state funded $9.5 million, Johnson said.

On May 1, 2018, it will be against the law to hold anyone in a county jail for a mental health problem, Johnson said, a certain amount of pride in his voice.
“This shouldn’t be happening anywhere. It should have ended decades ago everywhere in the United States,” Johnson said.
Four days ago, however, Disabilities Rights Center Attorney Andrew Milne said he has been monitoring SPU, which could lead to an investigation.
“We do have concerns about the appropriateness of that setting for individuals with mental illness – in particular individuals who have not been convicted of any crime who are nevertheless placed there in a prison setting under the Department of Corrections’ control, which we question the therapeutic value of and the effectiveness of the mental health treatment,” Milne said.

The DRC also filed a federal lawsuit last month seeking access to the death investigation of Phillip Borcuk, 34, who died while being held at the Residential Treatment Unit, which is upstairs from the Secure Psychiatric Unit, at the State Prison for Men.

Milne said the Department of Corrections has turned over some, but not all records of Borcuk’s death investigation and the federal court case continues.

House Bill 1565 is the latest in Rep. Cushing’s attempts over the years to require the Secure Psychiatric Unit to stop incarcerating civilly committed people who have mental illness who haven’t been convicted of a crime with mentally ill criminals at the unit. He said 30 years is too long to continue the practice, which he insists is unconstitutional.

“The Secure Psychiatric Unit is not a licensed facility,” Coulter said. When the state brings civilly committed people into a prison, the rules change and nurses and all licensed personnel have a decision to make, she told the committee."

“Do you stay and become complicit because where I come from I could not knowingly and repeatedly (accept) civil rights violations of some of our most vulnerable citizens,” Coulter said.

“The real tragedy of SPU has been the failure of numerous systems to protect these individuals from unlawful incarcerations masquerading as involuntary hospitalizations,” Coulter said.

"No one should be held in state prison because New Hampshire Hospital, the state psychiatric hospital, doesn’t have a secure enough unit to care for them", Coulter said."

Pictured below, Beatrice Coulter, a registered nurse who became an outspoken critic of the unit after working there for only a few days before quitting in disgust, testified that housing civilly committed people with mental illness with criminals in prison violates the Constitution and the Americans With Disabilities Act.

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