Gemma’s journey: to hell and back … repeatedly [Updated, twice]

Kristopher Rodriguez – too ill for incarceration

Mentally ill in solitary: ‘We’re not addressing the problem, we’re making it worse’

After her son tore off his penis with his bare hands in his cell, Gemma Pena thought Florida’s prison authorities might see his illness. They’d see he needed a hospital, instead of solitary confinement.

“No,” she said. “That’s when the nightmare really started.”

via http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/03/solitary-confinement-mentally-ill-prisoners-florida

---

Gemma Pena is in a hell that few can imagine.

She not only knows what has happened to her son in Florida prisons, she knows about the premature deaths of far too many mentally ill Florida inmates, including one recently deceased inmate the Miami Herald reported on who also suffered from schizophrenia, and whose name is too similar to Gemma’s son’s not to deepen her desperation:

One day after an officer was stabbed during a melee at Columbia Correctional Institution, an inmate who suffered from mental illness was found dead in a protective custody cell at the facility’s annex Tuesday morning, the Miami Herald has learned …

… On Tuesday morning, well after 7 a.m. checks, inmate Jason Rodriguez, 46, was found unresponsive. He was in confinement because his mother had called the prison within the last week, worried that her son’s life had been threatened. The death is under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and an autopsy is scheduled.

 

Underpaid, overworked corrections officers are no substitute for mental health professionals, and underpaid, contracted mental health workers can accomplish little or nothing in prison settings. It’s proven destructive at best and deadly at worst – over and over again – to place the severely mentally ill in prison, but prosecutors and judges either don’t read newspapers or just don’t give a damn.

Please take the time to read and share the Guardian story about Gemma and Kristopher from the link above. Thank you.

 

Update 12/20/18: Kristopher Rodriguez was supposed to be released on 12/18/18. It is my understanding that he was instead transferred to a medical facility – perhaps before his release date – that was NOT chosen by his mother and legal guardian, Gemma Pena, and is no where near her south Florida residence. When a man is too mentally ill to learn any lesson at all from incarceration, he is not an inmate: he is a hostage. For so long as the state overrides Gemma’s desires for placement for Kristopher, he remains a hostage, and Florida taxpayers are paying his ransom, to no avail. Gemma’s tax payments have been quite obviously without representation for most of Kristopher’s incarceration and will continue to be without any representation if he is held against her will at facility that Florida Department of Corrections or another state agency chose. There’s little hope for  change once Goveror-elect Ron DeSantis’ takes office, as he is fully on board with privatizing public service, including incarceration, putting tens of thousands of unnecessary employees as well as innumerable corporate boards in between taxpayers and the services their tax dollars pay for: “Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis also recently named a GEO employee to his transition team’s economic “advisory” committee.” Please share this updated post in hopes it will facilitate Kristopher’s transfer to a facility of Gemma’s choice, and end journeys to hell and back. Thank you.

Update 12/28/18: A hearing was held today. Kristopher Rodriguez will be transferred to a facility near his mother/legal guardian. Here is Gemma Pena’s message for other mothers who are enduring what the Florida Department of Corrections is doing to their mentally ill child …

https://twitter.com/Gpena1957Gemma/status/1078700111235043328

 

 

Jason Rodriguez may also have been too mentally ill for incarceration – may he rest in peace