Pete Earley

Celebrating with Patti

(11-21-25) My wonderful cancer doctor, Dr. Alexander Spira, with Virginia Cancer Specialists, told me this morning that a recent CT scan showed the cancer in my right lung remains in remission. It has not grown or spread!

Studies show that 60 percent of the patients taking my life-saving medication live five years of more. I am coming up on my two-year anniversary.

Being told you have Stage Four non-small cell carcinoma (BTW: I never smoked) hits you like a bucket of ice water in the face. After receiving that diagnosis, I decided to retire from writing and focus on my health, my supportive spouse Patti, our grandchildren and our family. I also began checking off adventures on a bucket list.

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(11-18-25) Tis the season for charitable giving so emails asking for donations are starting to appear in my inbox. Before writing checks, I like to check on the finances of mental health non-profits.

Here are snippets from four national mental health organizations: the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Health America, the Treatment Advocacy Center and the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance. 

Guidestar (now called Candid) posts federal Form 990 tax reports.

It lists NAMI’s gross revenues on its 2024 tax report at $35 million with assets worth a minimum of $62.7 million.  That is tremendous growth since I first became a lifelong member of NAMI in 2006. Back then, it only reported $5.8 million in net assets and often struggled to raise funds.

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(6-21-25) Ridiculous! The federal government agreed to drop charges but not state authorities.

Guest Post via email:

Hi Pete,  Nick Gallo can’t read or write, has the mental capacity of a child, and an IQ of 50. However, he is accused of posting threats against President Trump. The video of his arrest really paints the picture of who Nick is and what he understands.

Federal prosecutors have dropped their case, citing his cognitive limitations.

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(11-25-24) THIS IS NOT ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH.

My twenty-second and last book, No Human Contact: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security and Two Inmates Who Changed the System, is not for the faint of heart because it describes – often in graphic detail and from a convict’s point of view – life imprisonment in the harshest conditions allowed under the U.S. Constitution.

For 33 years, I corresponded with Thomas Silverstein, who murdered three people while in America’s most secure penitentiary, including a correctional officer. A member of the notorious prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood, Silverstein spent 36 years in isolation yet he found meaning in his life and ultimately rejected the gang.

His story raises questions about whether nurture or nature creates a killer.

I met him in 1987 in the bowels of Leavenworth prison where I asked him about his decision to attack and savagely stab Merle Clutts, a veteran officer.

Listen to Pete Earley’s taped interview with Thomas Silverstein describing murder that he committed.

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Nashville’s Behavior Care Center is a first-of-its-kind, licensed mental health/addiction treatment facility built inside a jail complex.

(11-22-2024) Are residential mental health and addiction centers located inside jails in our future? Should they be?

Earlier this month, I spoke to an elite group of sheriffs in Nashville attending a Large Jail Network conference. The LJN is composed of senior officials from the largest jails in the United States. This meeting focused on jails becoming the de facto largest public mental health facilities in our country. (The LJN was established in 1989 by the National Institute of Corrections, a part of the U.S. Justice Department.)

Nashville was chosen because Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall operates a first-of-its-kind 60-bed Behavioral Care Center (BCC) as part of his jail. This is not a separate cellblock where arrestees with mental illnesses and/or addictions are housed and seen by a visiting psychiatrist or social workers. The BCC is a state licensed, residential treatment center adjacent to the jail where individuals charged with crimes – that are clearly linked to their addiction and/or mental illnesses – can have the criminal charges against them dropped if they complete a rigorous treatment regime while incarcerated.Click to continue…

(11-20-24) Risdon N. Slate, an expert about the criminalization of mental illness, has published a memoir, Resilience In The Storm: My Journey With Mental Illness, describing his personal struggles, lessons learned and his recovery. I asked him to share part of his story.

Dear Pete, this chapter captures me in a full-blown manic episode after my psychiatrist decided I was not mentally ill and took me off lithium. Prior to the doctor stopping my medication, I had remained in the closet regarding my mental illness for eight years, telling only significant others that I was bipolar and seeing psychiatrists behind the scenes for meds. I was running from the stigma surrounding mental illness. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed.

After the manic episode, I decided if this could happen to me as a criminology professor with a PhD in criminal justice, work experience as a federal probation officer and as an assistant to the warden at a medium/maximum death row prison it could happen to anyone.

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