Human Rights Demand

Host: Mary Neal, director of Human Rights Demand. Please call 347.857.3293 to speak on air.

Guest: Gina Burns, mother of Jeremy Smith. Jeremy goes on trial Monday in California for "making terrorist threats" to a corrections officer. Jeremy is a mentally ill inmate who was due to be released in December 2014. Therefore, prison investors seek to legally sanction his continued imprisonment. Many mentally ill people who were initially imprisoned for misdemeanors, like vagrancy, actually remain imprisoned for LIFE at great expense to taxpayers and tremendous distress to their families. Mentally ill people find it hard to understand and follow prison rules, making it easy to lengthen their sentences. The USA has 1.25 million mentally ill inmates. Over 60 percent of inmates in solitary confinement are mentally ill. Prison torture is common for mentally ill inmates, and their deaths in custody happen frequently. Sometimes deaths of mentally ill inmates are covered-up by jails, prisons, and government officials. Health discrimination is allowed, despite its tragic results.