Over the course of nine days at New Mexico’s Otero County Detention Center last June, Jacob Gutierrez repeatedly engaged in self-harm and survived multiple suicide attempts before taking his life. A lawsuit accuses jail staff of failing to keep him safe.
Arthur’s story speaks to a troubling tendency in the legal system, reform advocates say: to treat mental health crises as criminal matters, rather than matters of public health.
A report from an advocacy group says that deaths in the state’s jails have soared— and that 2019 could set a record for suicides.
Media coverage obsessively focuses on homicides, which are at historical lows. Meanwhile, suicides and overdoses skyrocket, quietly driving record declines in American life expectancy.
Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. When Jeffrey Epstein died in a federal jail, the attorney general was, as he tells it, “appalled” and “frankly angry to learn of the MCC’s failure to adequately […]
The same culture exists across the country, experts say—with devastating effects.
With Appeal contributor Raina Lipsitz
A Texas jail suicide involving a woman who couldn’t make bail in a shoplifting case highlights of the plight of pretrial detainees with mental illness.