Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Treatment Of Mentally Ill Prisoners

Concertina wire surrounding a prison
Kate Ter Harr
/
Flickr Creative Commons

Note: This is a rebroadcast from earlier this year.

A recent report by Human Rights Watch documents widespread abuse of mentally ill inmates in prisons across America. The abuses include dousing with chemical sprays, being shocked with stun guns and strapping inmates to beds for hours at a time.

Host Frank Stasio talks with the lead author of the report, Jamie Fellner, about her research. Stasio also speaks with Wallace Kirby, a community organizer advocate for University Legal Services in Washington, D.C. Kirby spent much of his life in prison and has received a diagnosis for paranoid schizophrenia. He talks about the abuse he suffered in prison.

Stasio also speaks with Elizabeth Simpson, an attorney with North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc., about mentally ill inmates she has defended in cases of abuse. 

Stay Connected
Hady Mawajdeh is a native Texan, born and raised in San Antonio. He listened to Fresh Air growing up and fell in love with public radio. He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication at Texas State University and specialized in electronic media. He worked at NPR affiliate stations KUT and KUTX in Austin, Texas as an intern, producer, social media coordinator, and a late-night deejay.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.