WITNESS
Jamie Fellner, Esq., is the director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch (HRW). The program promotes increased respect for international human rights in the United States by documenting and advocating against human rights abuses by U.S. federal, state and local officials, particularly abuses in the criminal justice system. Ms. Fellner has researched and written extensively on criminal justice policies and prison conditions. She is the author or co-author of numerous published Human Rights Watch reports and backgrounders on human rights violations in the United States, including: Ill Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness; Collateral Casualties: Children of Incarcerated Drug Offenders in New York; Race and Incarceration in the United States; and Out of Sight: Supermaximum Security Confinement in the United States.
Prior to assuming the position of director in 2001, Ms. Fellner was associate counsel at HRW. Earlier in her work at Human Rights Watch, Ms. Fellner worked as a researcher and advocate for the Americas Division. A former litigator in Washington, D.C., Ms. Fellner obtained her law degree from Boalt Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, and completed her doctoral studies in Latin American history at Stanford University. She received her undergraduate degree from Smith College.
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STATEMENT
Corrections systems have not been able to keep up with the exploding prison population—much less the exploding population of offenders with mental illnesses. Many—if not most—prison mental health services are woefully deficient. They are crippled by understaffing, insufficient facilities, limited programs, and the restrictions imposed on them by prison rules and prison culture. All too often, seriously ill prisoners receive little or no meaningful treatment. They are neglected, accused of malingering, treated as disciplinary problems.
Without the necessary care, mentally ill prisoners suffer painful symptoms and their conditions can deteriorate. They are afflicted with delusions and hallucinations, debilitating fears, extreme and uncontrollable mood swings.… They refuse to obey orders or lash out without apparent provocation. They assault other prisoners or staff. They beat their heads against cell walls, smear themselves with feces, self-mutilate, and commit suicide.… By helping individual prisoners regain health and improve coping skills, [mental health services] promote safety and order within the prison community as well as offer the prospect of enhancing community safety when the offenders are ultimately released.
Corrections officials recognize the challenge posed to their work by the large and growing number of prisoners with mental illness. They recognize they are being asked to serve a function for which they are ill equipped. They need support in their efforts to ensure appropriate conditions of confinement and mental health services for the mentally ill men and women consigned to them. Political sentiments and public opinion must be marshaled to understand the need for enhanced mental health resources—for those in as well as outside of prison. The problems we have documented can be solved—but to do so requires drastically more public commitment, compassion, and common sense than have been shown to date.
Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission
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Note: Some witnesses submitted documents in addition to the written statement they prepared for the hearing. In most cases, those documents are not available on the Commission's web site.
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