John Irwin, a former prisoner, now a professor of penology at San Francisco State, warned, “The Department has been searching for a new technique of control…Now they’ve concocted a new category, the revolutionary psychopath, aggressive prisoner, violence-prone. Once they place persons in it, they will justify using a variety of bizarre techniques against them to control their behavior, to produce a person who is docile, the perfect inmate…”
Peter Breggin is worried too. He sees psychosurgery as “the ultimate ‘therapeutic weapon’ for any state hospital administrator or prison warden.” Breggin is taking his campaign against lobotomy and psychosurgery to the public. He’s calling for hospitals to ban it, for state and federal governments to outlaw it, for lawyers to lodge malpractice suits in dubious cases of “implied consent.”
“We’re moving more and more toward the oppression of everybody,” he said. And he isn’t above mentioning the fact that the Soviet Union outlawed lobotomy in 1951.
Related:
Arbitrary imprisonment, Dangerous waits for psychiatric evaluations?, Mentally ill inmate gets care, despite state's objections, More 
- Arbitrary imprisonment
Joseph Steinberger thought he had won one of the most important trials of his legal career.
- Dangerous waits for psychiatric evaluations?
State officials admit delays for jail-inmate psychiatric evaluations have increased considerably.
- Mentally ill inmate gets care, despite state's objections
The guards “tortured me there,” he said, adding that he got “zero” mental-health treatment in prison.
- Punish the mentally ill!
Officials in Maine attorney general Steven Rowe’s office recently made a legislative effort regarding mentally ill prisoners in a controversial way.
- Sluggish response to suicide
An eyewitness to the suicide of Ryan Rideout, a 25-year-old, severely mentally ill Augusta man who hanged himself with his bedding in his Maine State Prison Supermax cell on October 5, calls into question the official version of events.
- Death in the Supermax
A 25-year-old inmate killed himself in the state’s Supermax prison on October 5, corrections officers say. But while a Rockland newspaper quoted the prison warden as saying the inmate was not considered a suicide risk, Ryan Rideout had a long history of mental illness and suicidal behavior.
- The failure of ‘tough-on-crime’ tactics
It was after midnight, and Dawn Jacques lay sleepless in her cell at the Adult Correctional Institutions, shuddering. Bathed in sweat, she stared at the ceiling for hours until it blurred.
- Three years and counting
For the past three years, Portland Phoenix contributing writer Lance Tapley has been the only reporter in Maine to pay attention to the appalling conditions suffered by inmates in the Maine State Prison
- Lawmakers to probe prison
For years controversy has churned over the Maine State Prison's treatment of both inmates and correctional officers. For the first time, legislators have taken action.
- Putting an end to the hunger strike
Maine State Prison officials ended a hunger strike involving at least 10 inmates of the solitary-confinement Supermax unit in Warren by threatening to withhold the strikers’ psychotropic medications, according to allegations by an inmate who participated in the strike.
- Screwing the youth
Wole Akinbi was 16 when someone phoned to say his best friend had been shot.
- Less
Topics:
Flashbacks
, Health and Fitness, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, California Council on Criminal Justice, More
, Health and Fitness, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, California Council on Criminal Justice, Case Western Reserve University, Journal of the American Medical Association, National Institute of Mental Health, San Francisco State University, Tulane University, University of Texas System, Psychotic Disorders, Less
