Former Death Row Inmate Helping Others in LA's Twin Towers

In January 2016, the Education-Based Incarceration Bureau of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, in collaboration with Correctional Health Services, initiated an experimental program whereby two inmates from the jail’s general population were rehoused into two acute Forensic Inpatient Unit step-down pods for inmates with serious mental illness, to serve as peer caregivers.

Since 2018, Craigen Armstrong and Adrian Berumen, in this role, have led the extension of their duties from assisting in the everyday operation of the pod to offering an extensive program of care and support for their peers with mental illness wherein they work as Mental Health Assistants. Their program has been successful in reducing negative outcomes for their peers; in 2019, the Corrections Health Services reported a 600% decrease in self-injurious incidents, when compared to similar units throughout the jail. The program received an Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties in 2020.

In 2021, the Mental Health Assistants were authorized to recruit additional Assistants from the general population of the L.A. County Jail system through the Education Based Incarceration Bureau’s program. As of January 2022, there are now 6 total Mental Health Assistants.

The following feature, "Seeking redemption: A death row inmate’s journey into L.A. County’s largest psych ward," appeared in the Los Angeles Times in the December 13th, 2023 edition and discussed Armstrong's journey and the role he plays now helping other incarcerated persons.

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Rules are often bent on the fourth floor of Twin Towers Correctional Facility, where many inmates are like Ray — volatile and frightened, the worst symptoms of their mental illnesses kept in check by a balance of medication and monitoring.

When Armstrong first heard about working here, it sounded like a good deal: passing out meals and snacks, helping with meds and hygiene, keeping cells and common areas clean, all in exchange for his own cell and a few extra privileges.

Armstrong had returned to Los Angeles from San Quentin months earlier after unexpectedly winning his appeal in 2016. The state Supreme Court had tossed out his conviction of murdering three brothers in Inglewood in 2001. Still facing the charges, he remained in custody while his attorney and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office discussed a plea deal or another trial.

He had initially been housed in the nearby Men’s Central Jail, but the politics — the often violent racial divisions — kept him on edge. Living and working among the inmates in Twin Towers, the jail’s de facto mental hospital just across the street, gave him an out.

There were times when he wanted to give up. He knew little about mental illness, how erratic moods govern behavior, how anger or fear leads to violence or withdrawal. He heard the men crying at night. He saw how they tried to hurt themselves, sometimes succeeding.

But partnering with another inmate, Adrian Berumen, Armstrong, 42, grew adept at interacting with the inmates, whom he came to see as patients. Over the last six years, he and Berumen, 28, who left Twin Towers in 2022 to serve a sentence in state prison, engineered a transformation inside the county jail system.

The idea — initially developed by the county Department of Health Services, which is responsible for providing healthcare in the jails — was based on peer counseling programs and brought inmates from the general population into the jail’s psychiatric units, where they would live and assist county staff with treatment services.

The program had been in place, but the results were inconsistent until Armstrong and Berumen arrived. They studied and collaborated. They recruited and trained other inmates, put together a six-month educational curriculum and started calling themselves mental health assistants. They wrote a book and were invited to speak to students at Stanford and Cornell universities and to members of the National Assn. of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.

“I do believe this is a vital program,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said during a June board meeting. “I think ... this type of assistance is so critically important. It will save lives. It will save costs.”

The Board of Supervisors recently voted unanimously to expand the program from about 100 to more than 600 patients by 2025 in both Twin Towers and the Century Regional Detention Facility for women. The cost of this expansion is estimated at $850,000.

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You can read the full feature, "Seeking redemption: A death row inmate’s journey into L.A. County’s largest psych ward," at the Los Angeles Times website. You can also read Craigen Armstrong and Adrian Berumen's book "The Solution: Mental Health Assistants: Bridging the Gap to Effective Treatment."