From My Files Friday: Four years ago, I posted this blog about the first time that I went inside a prison in the early 1970s and saw inmates with mental illnesses. Sadly, the number of prisoners will mental disorders has skyrocketed since then and what I observed in Oklahoma nearly four decades ago remains an all too familiar sight.
The Public Cared More About A Trapped Cat Than Ill Inmates, March 14, 2010
The first time I went into a prison as a reporter was in the early 1970s when I worked at the now closed Tulsa Tribune. The city editor, Windsor Ridenour, sent me to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester to cover a pardon and parole board meeting.
I suspect Windsor wanted me to see a tougher slice of life from what I had experienced as the son of a minister, but I doubt he had any idea how that trip would ultimately impact my life. My visit into the white knuckle hell that is McAlester ultimately caused me to write The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, which recounts a year that I spent inside a maximum security penitentiary.
It was in McAlester that I first saw how inmates with mental illness were being warehoused. Prison doctors shot them with Thorazine that reduced them to drooling zombies who rarely left their bunks.