Jail can be a death sentence. It shouldn’t be.

Twenty-seven-year-old Jonathan Fano, who had bipolar disorder, came to the East Baton Rouge Parish jail in October 2017 on misdemeanor charges. Three months later, he was dead. He had spent 92 days in solitary confinement, and two weeks before his death by suicide, the for-profit medical firm handling his care decided that Fano was “exaggerating” and ordered him off his antipsychotic medication.

Overcrowding, poor medical and mental health services, and insufficient or poorly trained staff have created a crisis where jails are not only dangerous, but deadly. Newly-obtained records from the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Department show that 15 other people have died in the parish jail since the beginning of 2017. Since 2012, a total of 40 individuals have died while in custody of the jail. A 2018 report from the Promise of Justice Initiative found that most of the deaths between 2012 and 2016 were caused by “preventable or treatable illnesses” that may have been avoided under less inhumane conditions.

While the death rate at the East Baton Rouge jail far exceeds the national average, stories from jails around the nation highlight the neglect and abuse that our country routinely inflicts on incarcerated people, many of whom have not been convicted of a crime. A series of deaths at the Cuyahoga County Jail prompted a 2018 U.S. Marshals investigation and a report that concluded the Ohio jail was “one of the worst in the country.” The report found that individuals were forced to sleep on the floor and lacked running water, functioning toilets, basic amenities, and adequate food.

Just south of Ohio, the situation is no better. Most jails in Kentucky are beyond 100 percent of their capacity. The overcrowding breeds cruelty: Last December, five corrections officers were charged with first-degree manslaughter in the death of Michael L. Moore. Moore was booked for the minor offense of public intoxication, but was then hooded and strapped into a restraint chair. Security videos reveal that corrections officers pepper-sprayed and shocked Moore, then slammed him into a concrete wall and a metal toilet. Moore died of internal bleeding after the officers failed to seek medical treatment for him.

Nationally, about two-thirds of the population in city and county jails have yet to be convicted. In the East Baton Rouge jail, the vast majority of those who died had not been found guilty of even a minor offense. Most are trapped for weeks, months, or years because they are impoverished and cannot afford to post their bond. Many of them are struggling with mental illness, homelessness, and substance use disorders. These people are our most vulnerable population, at the highest risk even before they are incarcerated. They need compassion, services, and treatment, not to be warehoused by the thousands in inhumane and dangerous cages.

Our reliance on incarceration to address social and public health issues has created a dangerous crisis, both for those caught in the criminal system and for our communities. The way some want to address this is to pour public funds into the jails to bandage the gaping wounds. But why would we direct resources away from community services that can reduce crime, like schools and treatment facilities, just to keep more people in cages?

Across the country, we rely on jails to hold too many people and to hold them for reasons that jails were never intended to address. Jails are not a solution for poverty, nor are they designed to treat medical and mental health disorders. The consequences of using them for these purposes have been deadly.

have a moral imperative to pursue justice on behalf of the poor and vulnerable. Our elected leaders and criminal justice stakeholders must fix the systems we use to decide who will go to jail and why. If those in power will not change the systems, they must be held accountable when their decisions lead to unnecessary deaths.

– Rev. Alexis Anderson
Executive Director of P.R.E.A.C.H.
member, East Baton Rouge
Parish Prison Reform Coalition.

This article originally published in the October 14, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.