Hello, it has been 2 weeks since that last blog discussing the prison population today in America’s correctional system. Most importantly, the facts underlying the reasons for high rates of crime and imprisonment. What the public can consider now is that Inspector General Mr.. Horowitz and Bureau of Prisons Director, Ms.. Colette Peters was summoned to a hearing by the Senate behind the recent deaths by suicide of mentally ill inmates. Ms. Colette Peters is brave for having taken on the very difficult task of reforming the Bureau of Prison’s penal system. Still, after the hearing, what was gathered by the Senate and the public is that mental illness is currently affecting both Correctional Officers and inmates. Correctional Officers suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stemming from stints of war traumas. Inmates, on the other hand, suffer from the same (PTSD) stemming from their substance abuse, and sexual and physical assaults (e.g.: rapes, fights, or accidents) in a period of their life that perhaps was never clinically treated at a professional level.
   

   So the question now looms: whom will the Department of Justice/Bureau of Prison hire qualified Psychologists/Psychotherapists with enough knowledge and experience to treat such mental illnesses? Will that proposition reduce the recidivism of former inmates staying in the free world, working and attending to their treatment? And, heal Correctional Officers from their war traumas? This IS an epidemic we have been seeing within our prison system but that has been completely ignored. Did it have to cost the lives of mentally ill inmates who took their lives by their own hands in order for the Bureau of Prisons and the United States Senate to begin taking this matter seriously? And the Correctional Officers who have committed suicide outside of the prison perimeters due to mental illnesses that they couldn’t regulate? Yes, it is an extremely difficult task, which Ms. Colette Peters has taken. Who is on her side? Being a woman “taking the reigns of a beast that men are only capable of handling” is boldness at its fullest. Remember what she did for the Oregon Department of Corrections. She can do the same for the Bureau of Prisons. For me!

   Congratulations to you women who take pride in restoring humanity and standing bold in the face of adversity.

This is your month!….. Juan Cavazos