Marcia Powell, an inmate at the Goodyear prison in Arizona, died after being left outside during the day in an uncovered chain-link cell in the desert heat. With temperature reaching 103, Powell collapsed and was later pronounced dead.
Powell was serving 27 months for prostitution. The sentence alone seems a bit shocking in length. She collapsed at 2:30 pm after four hours in the heat. Four hours seems shorter than what would usually caused heat-related death, but 103 temperatures combined with prior health issues would make such injury as distinct possibility. Inmates often have diminished health status due to prior chemical or alcohol abuse. Powell’s picture suggests an obviously hard (and sad) life. There is a reasonable question why a prison in such a hot area would use such uncovered cells.
For the story, click here.
Mike. A.
That was so very well put.As are so many in our society nowadays,invisble.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520914,00.html
A different article describes what happened in more detail.
She was placed outside at 11am during the majority of the hottest hours of any day, though the prison policy is for no more than two hours.
Unless I miss my guess, they gave her a bottle of water, which she may or may not have totally consumed, and then forgot about her.
Heat stroke can occur quickly in essentially healthy people with several OTC and prescriptions meds, caffeine, alcohol, and/or recent prior heat exposures accelerating the process. Especially when minus frequent hydrations.
She may have been a meth addict, but her teeth could also have been knocked out and/or extracted.
The hierarchy of classification of mental ‘disorders’ stemming from organic brain diseases is more specific. This is also what allows for their exclusion as the cause of the more common symptoms of mental ‘illness’.
Matthew, I believe your comments misconstrue what most people have attempted to say on this thread. My point, and, I believe, that of others as well, was that this woman was a victim of indifference on the part of every person with whom she came in contact, from the consumers of her services to the guards in her prison. It makes no difference whether she was mentally ill, a drug addict, neither or both. To the world in which she lived, it was though she did not exist. Her death is doubly tragic because she was invisible.
Matthew,
You presume too much. Perhaps not in that Bron’s view is limited (that is the point I was trying to impress upon him), but to assume none of us has experience with the mentally ill (or lack of resources) would be incorrect. The final straw in deciding to cut my Ex loose was a call from her psychiatrist warning me that her alcoholism had degraded her mental health to the point that she was a direct danger to me, herself and others. She had begun to have dissociative fugues and violent fantasies the doctor wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t try to carry out. It not only cost her a marriage but any custodial rights to her daughter from a previous marriage and since the split has resulted in multiple arrests on various charges for her. Her final physical attack on me along with her diagnosis was part and parcel of why I was able to get the marriage annulled too. I myself went through a bout of depression so bad during this period that I indeed required treatment although now fully recovered. I also have a cousin who’s schizophrenia and meth addiction (and literally any other drug he can find) has had a substantial negative impact across a huge swath of the family. Your tone is reflexive and shows a misunderstanding just as great as Bron’s. Insanity is a deficiency or it wouldn’t be considered an illness that requires treatment. Any mental or physical illness is either a deficiency (from genetic to dietary) or the result of a pathogen/toxin. Mental illness also knows no class barriers. Rich people, in fact, sometimes get to be as rich as they are because of underlying mental disorders just as much as poor people can become poor due to underlying mental disorders. Not all mental illness have the same expression or the same impact to socio-economics. Conversely, your post points to one of the reasons we need universal health care in this country and that especially includes mental health. None of us lives in a perfect world, but the rather pursuit of a better world for all is part of what draws people into this salon: discussing how to get there from here.
It is amazing how so many people are capable of relegating this woman to just another meth addict or insane asylum candidate. If she were a normal healthy human being after all, her death would be somewhat objectionable. Since we all know meth addicts, prostitutes, and people with mental illness aren’t worthy of wasting any of our enlightened attention on, we are all probably much better off anyways. But really though, get off your high horses people. Bron’s comments in particular seem to lack a basic understand of mental illness. Most people don’t rise above their mental problems because most people never even seek treatment. Self-righteous folks like yourself have helped to promote the idea that mental illness or deficiency is weakness. I know in your perfect little world, only deadbeats have mental problems, but the fact of the matter is that depression (and other mental illnesses) either distort one’s own perception or completely eliminate the individual’s desire to live, and “deadbeats” are the least likely to have a stable support system around them. The rich and the privileged have family and friends that encourage to get treatment. They have the financial means to get treatment. The poor and the introverted hide their problems or resolve themselves to live with them. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived without health insurance, but judging from your words you really need to try it for a few years…
Buddha:
“That’s a remarkably prescient comment in light of what Heisenberg and Gödel later postulated.”
******************
Post hoc ergo propter hoc!
Those old Romans knew a thing or two about the world.
mespo,
Hume can make one scratch his head, but at least he doesn’t induce headaches like Kant! lol. Indeed cause and effect can be murky, but I think that’s part of the point I was trying to impress upon Bron is that even by the numbers to link sanity to biology as a sole indicator and/or primary causal root may not be prima facie incorrect, but it is most certainly incomplete.
As an aside, I’ve never read Ovid, but that quote alone tells me I should. That’s a remarkably prescient comment in light of what Heisenberg and Gödel later postulated.
Hey Mr. Plow did you used to be the physician-Senator from Tennessee? 🙂
Buddha:
“I was trying to illustrate is not occurring in isolation and therefore cannot by definition in terms of single causal factors, but rather as a totality of the whole set which includes many other potential causal roots.”
*************
I see you have waded into the murky waters of cause and effect. Read Hume then come away scratching your head as most do.
“In reality, there is no part of matter, that does ever, by its sensible qualities, discover any power or energy, or give us ground to imagine, that it could produce any thing, or be followed by any other object, which we could denominate its effect. Solidity, extension, motion; these qualities are all complete in themselves, and never point out any other event which may result from them.”
–David Hume (“An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.”)
Personally, I like Ovid’s take on the subject better:
“The cause is hidden, but the result is known.”
[Causa latet, vis est notissima.]
–Publius Ovidius Naso (Metamorphoses IV)
To paraphrase JT, it ain’t James Coburn in “The President’s Analyst,” but it ain’t bad either!
IN the picture, she looks like she was probably a meth addict. It’s horrible what that stuff can do to people.
Bron,
You are thinking of my grandfather.
I don’t think you are seeing my point and that may be partially my fault. What you are describing as a system with a sole point of causality (biology), I was trying to illustrate is not occurring in isolation and therefore cannot by definition in terms of single causal factors, but rather as a totality of the whole set which includes many other potential causal roots. It’s not that I think you don’t see the forest for the trees, but that you are really focused on the one tree. I see where you are coming from in that if one views the body as a system and the universe outside the body as another, then the ability to react/adapt/evolve is based in the inherent limitations of the biological body. I just think that is too simplistic given the infinite inputs the universe can provide to influence that system to move either way. There are only four nucleotides, but there are infinite ways the universe can shape them no matter what their innate proclivities for combination might be.
Buddha:
Exploring the possibilities. Certainly there are people that overcome their biology. But Stephen Hawking explores the universe because he can, his work takes him outside himself and gives him something to focus on rather than his physical condition. He is lucky to have his wonderful mind to be able to do theoretical physics.
I am of the opinion that certain people are able to rise above their circumstances in life but as you well know it is very hard. Why did you? Because you are smart and probably hard working. Had you been less intelligent you may not have been able to do it. I think I remember you saying that your father was a sharecroper/small farmer and was very poor. How many people rise out of such humble beginnings? Not many that I know of. Why do they, why did you?
I do agree that mental illness can be induced and is not necessarily organic. But there again what causes one person to survive and another not? Take 2 siblings with nut jobs for parents and one survives and goes on to be a succesful individual and the othere dosent, what caused those outcomes? What is a resileant mind, is it biology or something else? Thoughts are only expressions of chemical reactions so clearly this process is biological. So the chemistry of an individual brain probably plays a large part in mental illness and in resileance of an individual.
therefor – biology and not free will govern the affairs of man. We are nothing but mere sequences of 4. A, C, G, and T control us at a very elemental level beyond our understanding as of yet.
Oh my.
Bron,
Your assumption there is that all mental illness is based in biology. Have you ever heard the phrase “Mad as a hatter”? Being a hatter is generally no longer a career option in this world, but even when it was, it was a choice that had nothing to do with genetics. The reason the phrase came into being is that back in the old days they cured the felt with with mercury. Mercury is toxic and one of the potential side effects is insanity. From The Straight Dope website, “The chemicals used in hat-making included mercurious nitrate, used in curing felt. Prolonged exposure to the mercury vapors caused mercury poisoning. Victims developed severe and uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, called “hatter’s shakes”; other symptoms included distorted vision and confused speech. Advanced cases developed hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms.”
You also assume insanity cannot be induced by psychological pressures unrelated to biology. I guarantee that if one were of such a mind to waste the time and resources (and if one were of the mindset of a Neocon) anyone can be made to loose their mind through the use of mixed methodologies including but not limited to subterfuge, surreptitious and selective drug dosing, isolation, torture, propaganda, sensory interference, etc. If you apply enough of the right kind of pressures for long enough, anyone will snap. Anyone.
The body is a vessel. A pot to the soul’s flower. While it’s true the size and chemical composition of the pot can affect the ultimate outcome of the plant’s growth, have you never seen a root bound plant that shattered it’s pot or simply grew through the bottom? Same thing. Just as you pointed out that evil can be either biological or a function of free will, so it can be said of any other human trait.
Brian May, the guitarist for Queen, is an auto-dactyl. His extremely long fingers make him particularly suited to play a stringed instrument or be a surgeon. Django Reinhardt, widely considered to be one of the most stunningly talented jazz guitarists of the 20th Century, had his left hand badly burned in a fire. It partially fused and paralyzed the third and fourth fingers. The doctors told him he’d never play guitar again. Despite this, he learned to play and made his fame after he taught himself to play solos with two fingers and to use the damaged fingers in chording. A triumph of free will over induced biology.
And need I say more than Stephen Hawking? The man has a debilitating neurological condition that would preclude most people from thinking clearly out of worry if nothing else, yet he’s gone on to become not only one of the greater minds in physics, but has far far outlived his prognosis due largely (or so it seems to me) to his ability to work around his ALS. A triumph of free will over natural biology.
While biology is most certainly a huge influence, it is hardly the sole determinate of one’s abilities or inabilities just as it is hardly the sole determinate of one’s sanity.
According to the article, Ms. Powell was serving 27 months for prostitution, an absurdity in itself. Given her appearance, it is likely that she was a street prostitute and probably had substance abuse problems as well. One may speculate as to whether she was mentally ill, but it cannot be doubted that she was one of society’s throwaways and the neglect she experienced in the custody of the state was a continuation of the neglect she experienced on the street. She died, as mespo noted, from indifference.
Bron,
Mental illness is common as mud. We have treatments for it. Poor people don’t ususally have access to treatments, rich people do. Mental illness doesn’t cover what people had had every advantage in life have done to others. These people approved this woman’s mistreatment and they have approved/initiated war and torture. What you’re speaking of is classism, not biology. I’m not trying to be argue mindlessly with you, I just think there’s a big difference between classism and biological determinism.
Jill:
she looks as though she is mentally ill, had she not been mentally ill she would not have been in this set of circumstances.
In that regard her biology, i.e. mental illness lead to her death. Albiet, the stupidity of the guards was the main factor in her death. But by behaving as she did she put herself at the mercy of stupid people. Did she behave that way on purpose or did her “biology” lead/force/compell her to lead the life she lead?
I was not saying that she deserved to die, of course she did not deserve to die because she was mentally ill. I was merely speculating about free will and how much we truly have. This case, in my mind, is a good example of the limits of our free will. But we do have free will to the extent we choose to be evil or not, but there again evil could be a result of a certain type of mental illness. Certainly Hitler did not have all of his marbels.
Anyway just some thoughts.
Bron,
Who’s biology are you talking about? Do you mean the biology that allowed prison officials to mistreat another human being? Do you mean all those intelligent people who worked at the OLC and justified torture? Do you mean someone like bush, who graduated from our top universities and authorized torture?
Cruelty isn’t about biology. It isn’t about class, race, gender, sexual orientation–none of it. You don’t know what this woman’s life might have been had she been given a real chance. If it’s biology then the people we consider the “best and the brightest” would not be destroying our country finacially, politcially and ethically in pursuit of empire and their own power. I utterly reject, based on the facts, that biology has anything to do with the horrible, cruel treatment this woman received. The people who participated in her death have much to answer for and they should be ashamed that they believed their actions were justified in any way. I am sorry for her death. It was in no way deserved.
biology is destiny, she looks as if she has mental health problems.
The longer I live the more I believe that biology is destiny, yes you do have free will but only to the extent your genetic make-up allows.
Hopefully your biology and your free will are integrated so that one enhances the other.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
-Elie Wiesel.