In 2006, Timothy Souders, a 21 year old male was incarcerated and sent to the Southern Michigan Correctional Center to serve a three to five year sentence. Despite an investigation showing that Souders needed urgent psychiatric care, He was chained down by the hands, feet, and waist, for up 17 hours at a time. According to prison rules, Souders activity was recorded on a 24 hour surveillance camera and by the guards. The prison tape recordings show a rapid decline in Souders mental health. He started healthy, but in four days’ time he could barely walk. The article reports that in the shower he fell over. The guards had to bring him back to his cell in a wheelchair and then chain him down again. On August 6th he was released from restraints and fell for the last time. Souders died from dehydration documented by the surveillance cameras and ignored by guards.
Souders was born in Adrian, Michigan to his mother Theresa Vaughn, who told 60 Minutes that her son’s troubles didn’t begin until late in his teenage years. It was then that he began to act strangely. Ms. Vaughn goes on in the article to describe an incident she remembers during the winter when her son was running outside with his clothes off, thinking he was a knight, fighting dragons. Souders battled with anxiety and depression, and spent time in and out of the hospital. He was caught shoplifting two paintball guns after one hospital stay. During the altercation, he grabbed a pocket knife, threatened employees, and begged a cop to shoot him. Instead he was stunned with a Taser. No one was hurt. “He had gotten to the point where his thinking wasn’t straight, and he was suicidal. And he should’ve never went to jail” Vaughn said.
Souders had three suicide attempts in jail. He pled to resisting an arrest and assault, for waving the pocket knife, and ended up in a Jackson County prison complex, with 5,000 inmates whose welfare has been monitored by a federal judge due to reports filed in the 1980’s. The article concludes stating that Souders was a part of a national trend of putting 300,000 mental patients behind bars nationwide. This trend started because of the closure of mental hospitals in the 1960’s. Souder’s solitary confinement was caused by him taking a shower without permission. During which, he broke a stool and used his sink to flood his cell. His chains came loose as well.
I believe, of course, there are many ethical implications in this situation. Firstly, the judge and prison facility had full knowledge that Souders had mental issues; he should have immediately been evaluated to determine the best course of action for his stay. Secondly, the article stated there was no mental health staff onsite at all to handle the inmate’s needs. The psychiatrist was on a seven-week leave of absence and no one was called in to replace them. That is extreme negligence on the part of the prison and its guards. To keep a human being in solitary and restrained in chains everyday like an animal, while ignoring his mental and physical needs. He refused to eat and died of dehydration. Why wasn’t he taken to a hospital or seen by a doctor? Then to makes things worse, the facility and staff recorded his deterioration on camera. They sat back and watched! There is a huge mental health problem in this state and country that needs to be addressed. People are not receiving the proper care or access to it in the first place which if placed in the wrong situation they can cause harm to themselves and most likely others , which leads them to be thrown into an already flawed system that can be of more detriment . There should definitely be treatment facilities for those individuals who find it difficult to cope and live with the general public and/or prison population. Many of the mass crimes in history were committed by those who had mental health issues. Incarceration without treatment is not the solution.