Saturday 2015 15.00 GMT

Tony Lester, who was schizophrenic, killed himself in an Arizona jail after what his family say was a series of failures by authorities that are only too common

When Patti Jones answers the phone, the energetic whirlwind immediately plunges into a story she’s told many times over – and is willing to tell as many times as it takes. Her nephew, Tony Lester, killed himself while in the custody of the Arizona department of corrections (ADC) in 2010, triggering a wrongful death suit, pressure for statewide reforms on the handling of mentally ill prisoners, and a trip to Washington to participate in congressional hearings on solitary confinement practices in American prisons.

“Since Tony’s death I have not stopped,” she says, “and I want to ensure that this never happens again. This is a way of life in the [ADC].” Her nephew’s death radicalized this prison reformer, turning her into a force of nature who nearly explodes over the course of our conversation, frustrated with what she sees as needless hangups in the prison system.

The story she tells is one of acute familiarity in US prisons, which have turned into warehouses for mentally ill people. Lester, like the estimated other 43 inmates who killed themselves between October 2005 and April 2011 under the eye of the ADC, ended up on a collision course with fate almost as soon as he entered an Arizona prison.

Six weeks after intake and processing, Lester was on suicide watch as his untreated severe mental illness pushed him into a break with reality. Two days after being released from this watch, he had slit his wrists in his cell with the razors a member of the prison’s staff carelessly gave him in a personal hygiene kit.

cont'd...

Link: http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/mar/07/for-mentally-ill-too-often-prison-means-solitary-neglect-and-even-death