Featured Article for June 2010


Voices: Lisa, North Carolina

Lisa's son turned himself in to the authorities after a probation violation. After two days in jail awaiting trial, her son called her to tell her that he was in a cell by himself. Fearing her son's depression and suicidal history, Lisa called the jail and asked that he be placed on suicide watch and not left alone. The jail, which has no record of Lisa's call, took no action whatsoever, and the Sheriff's Office, which was aware of Lisa's son's suicidal history, did not pass this information on to the jail. Tragically, Lisa's son was found unconscious in his cell about seven hours later, hanging by a bed sheet from a railing in the handicap bathroom. He died the next morning at the hospital.

"Every day is a challenge for me," says Lisa, who is having difficulty getting answers or even information about what happened to her son. "The doors are closed to parents in investigations, so the only way to find out what happened is to file a lawsuit.... [This is] a cold and tragic way to deal with this." Lisa wants policies that place youth in adult jails to change because she has learned firsthand that nonviolent offenders are treated like the worst criminals, and children are placed in segregation because adult facilities cannot accommodate juveniles. She says, "Juveniles have no place to go... [my son] shouldn't have had to die in jail."

 

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