Mental Health and California Prisons - Passing the Buck

TW: Suicide, self-harm

On the last day of Adam Collier’s life, he had breakfast in his cell in Kern Valley State Prison. He wrote two letters, one to his mother, the other to the guard who would later find his body. 

During the previous four years in prison, Collier had been hospitalized for mental health crises 14 times. His many letters to family and friends wobbled between lucidity and gibberish. His medical records proffered graphic descriptions of self-harm. Collier had originally landed in prison for exposing himself to women in public while high on meth. Ashamed and delusional, he tried to castrate himself with a broken plastic cup because he believed it was God’s desire.

The prison system’s response to Collier’s increasing anguish?

Transfers.

Between 2016 and 2020, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transferred Collier 39 times, ping-ponging him between mental health crisis beds and increasingly high security prisons at a pace so fast he told his mother, Susan Ottele: “I’m fucking dizzy.”

On Oct. 17, 2020, at age 43, he killed himself.

Mental Health in California prisons:

• In April 2000, one in eight California prison inmates had a diagnosed mental illness. In April 2022, it was one in three.
• In one year, 1,988 inmates with mental illness were transferred four times; 639 inmates, five times; 207 inmates, six times; 73 inmates, seven times; 32 inmates, eight times; 19 inmates, nine or more times.
• CalMatters analyzed 372 critical incident case summaries from the office of the Inspector General since 2018. Of 67 inmate suicides reviewed by the IG, 81% percent were determined to be “poorly” handled by the state.
• Since 2011, when the California State Legislature stripped the Inspector General office's oversight role over the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, CDCR is responsible for policing itself. Last year, legislators recommended the IG resume oversight over CDCR; this has not occurred.

“It makes my mental health worse,” said Steven Saucedo, 48, who has transferred at least eight times since last June, including relocations to attend court, CalMatters data shows. “You’re always on the move.”

To read more about Adam Collier's story, and hear from other inmates with a mental health diagnosis attempting to navigate their mental health in California Prisons, as well as the advocates working on their behalf, see this detailed investigation from CalMatters.