Woman on cross in protest over jailed son's care

A Decatur (Alabama) woman clung to a wooden cross set atop a backyard fence for hours in the summer heat to protest what she called the mistreatment of her son, who is being held in the city jail.

A poster placed on the fence in Maria Thornton's yard during Wednesday's protest declared she wouldn't eat, drink or come down from the cross until her son received help.

Decatur Fire and Rescue firefighters waited below the makeshift cross to make sure Thornton didn't fall. A police officer tried to coax her down and the 58-year-old woman eventually ended her protest some two hours and 40 minutes after it began Wednesday morning.

Thornton and her husband, James, said they believe jail staff are ignoring the mental health problems of their son, 28-year-old John Paul Thornton.

The woman's husband said he suspects their son is bipolar and they want him to get assistance.

"We don't want him out of jail," Maria Thornton told The Decatur Daily. "We want to put him somewhere he can get help ... He needs help."

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2008/07/woman_on_cross_in_protest_over.html

now that the bleeding heart civil rights lawyers, teamed with bloodless and stingy conservatives have managed to get state mental health facilities closed and their inmates dumped with no care.

Jails aren't a treatment facility. They're not in the business of diagnosing and providing treatment, nor should they be.

The problem is that our criteria of "a danger to oneself or to others" is far too narrow, requiring imminent or more often completed physical harm to be enforced. People who are mentally incapable of properly caring for themselves aren't judged to be a danger to themselves, and this is wrong.

I won't pretend the old state mental hospitals were the best solution. I worked in one, and they were often horrible, warehouses for human beings nobody wanted.

They were just better than jail.

Does anyone know why he is in jail? It could be the safety of the citizens comes
before this guys mental health treatment. All this story has is a mother on a
cross making a claim he needs mental help. No much to go on here.

:shrug: