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How to Help
MHASC is committed to raising awareness and encouraging public dialogue about the treatment of prisoners with mental illness. We invite you to join in our efforts.
There are many ways to get involved:
Attend MHASC organizing meetings, which take place in New York City, or MHASC legislative committee meetings, conducted by teleconference. Both meetings occur every two weeks. For upcoming meetings, click here.
Participate in our fund-raising drive. A donation in any amount is greatly appreciated and will help MHASC in this urgent effort. To donate, please click here.
Write or meet with your state representatives. Call for adequate treatment for incarcerated men and women in need of mental health services. To find your Assembly member, click here. For your state senator, click here.
Write to the press. Communications from the public that are published in newspapers and magazines can have a powerful impact, changing minds and motivating many to take action. To see a sample letter to the editor, click here.
Sell Boot the SHU wristbands. The Increasing visiblity of these wristbands broadens awareness and expands support in the community. All proceeds go directly to MHASC. For a wristband form, click here.
Provide resources. MHASC welcomes all forms of contributions and is in need of practical support. For a resource survey, click here.
Suggest other ways to participate. If you have a particular skill that will advance the efforts of MHASC, please contact MHASC. Such activites as working on the Boot the Shu Web site and producing materials for advocacy efforts are always appreciated.
Your support is crucial. Join with MHASC in the fight to deliver humane treatment to prisoners with psychiatric disabilities in New York State. All of us, including the most vulnerable incarcerated people in our state, are worthy of basic human rights. Together we can end the suffering.
(This letter may need to be edited to meet the requirements of various news outlets. Call to ask for rules on length and format.)
Dear Editor:
Last year, legislation prohibiting the placement of people with psychiatric disabilities in solitary confinement passed both houses of the New York State legislature. The bills were designed to address the mental health needs of these ill individuals and to increase prison safety for correctional officers.
Tragically, New York State’s former governor, George E. Pataki, vetoed this legislation.
At this moment, more than seven hundred people with psychiatric disabilities, wracked by delusions, hallucinations, depression, and extreme anxiety, continue to spend twenty-three hours a day utterly alone in small cells without stimulation, punished for actions caused by untreated symptoms. Out of desperation, these vulnerable individuals who are banished to New York’s special housing units (known as the SHU) commonly assault their own bodies with terrible brutality. Further, they repeatedly attempt suicide, and many succeed.
(Here you may add a personal statement.)
Once again, legislation (S333/A4870) to provide treatment and ban solitary confinement for psychiatrically disabled prisoners has been introduced in the New York State legislature. Families cannot wait while loved ones are suffering. It is urgent that this legislation be passed and then signed into law by Governor Eliot Spitzer.
Sincerely,
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