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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.

California: San Quentin plans psychiatric hospital for death row inmates

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San Quentin Death Row
Under court pressure to improve psychiatric care for deeply disturbed death row inmates, state officials are moving quickly to open a 40-bed hospital at San Quentin prison to house them.

The court-appointed monitor of mental health care in California's prison system reported to judges Tuesday that about three dozen men on death row are so mentally ill that they require inpatient care, with 24-hour nursing.

The urgency of psychiatric treatment for the mentally ill prisoners demands swift action, the court's monitor, Matthew Lopes, said in court papers. He said an agreement to provide the psychiatric wing at San Quentin was made possible by collaborative effort among the state, courts and prisoners' lawyers.

Some analysts see irony in providing for the long-term mental health of those sentenced to die.

"This is the only place on Earth where you'd be talking about building a psychiatric hospital for condemned prisoners," said Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring, who has written about the U.S. capital punishment system. "It is a measure of American greatness and American silliness at the same time."

Federal courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute people who are not aware of what is happening to them. "We are curing them to make them executable," Zimring said.


Source: Los Angeles Times, Paige St.John, June 11, 2014
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