[Publib] Suicide by Book

[Backwage at aol.com]

Today's Los Angeles Times contains a piece about Stephan Lilly, a  
mentally-ill man who has been caught up in our interesting system of justice,  and who 
is now bound for state prison on the strength of our "3 Strikes"  law.  A quote 
from the reporter who wrote the story:

"When I talked  to Lilly at Twin Towers, inmates were being led out of their 
cells one by one  and chained to metal tables, where they stared into space. 
Lilly told me he  sometimes gets down on his knees in his cell and cries. He's 
not allowed to  read, he said, because he could kill himself with a book, and 
he's actually  thought about it.

How would he kill himself with a book? I  asked.

'Eat the pages and gag,' he said. 

As I left, he asked me  to let his family know he was alive.

The howls and the pounding followed  me out the door."

------------------------  

An recent  article from Reuters reveals that the United States has reached a 
record 7  million people behind bars, on probation or parole.  That's one in 
every  thirty-two people.  About two million of those were sentenced for drug  
offenses, and about 2.2 million were in prison or in jail.  America leads  the 
world in the number of incarcerated people.  China, with a population  many 
times larger, has only 1.5 million prisoners.  
 
When Stephan Lilly reaches state prison, he will become one of about 34,000  
mentally ill inmates in that system, most of whom receive only cursory  
treatment.  On the other hand, the state maintains prison libraries, and he  may be 
permitted to read.
 
M. McGrorty