If You Weren't Opposed To Cash Bail And Solitary Confinement Before, You Will Be Now

Really, really opposed.

There are a lot of very good reasons to support bail reform. Perhaps you're uncomfortable with the idea of anyone spending months or even years in prison without having actually been convicted of the low-level crime of which they have been accused just because they can't afford bail. Maybe you question how causing those who can't afford bail to lose their jobs would reduce crime, in the grand scheme of things, or perhaps you couldn't come up with a solid answer to the question of how someone who paid bail would be at all less likely to commit a crime than someone who hadn't.

But if you're still not there yet, here's a story for you.

On August 19th, 2020, Larry Eugene Price Jr., a schizophrenic, developmentally disabled and unhoused man with an IQ of 55, walked into the Fort Smith Police Department in Arkansas and started having an episode. He yelled at police officers and put his hand into the shape of a gun, pretending to shoot them. He shouted incoherently and refused to leave. This was not the first time he had done this — he was known to the officers of that station, who were well aware of his situation.

Out of what they say was "concern" for Price's well-being, the officers took him into custody. He was transferred to Sebastian County Jail later that evening and charged with "terroristic threatening in the first degree" with his bail set at $1000. This meant he would have had to pay $100 to be let out. He didn't have $100 and so he had to stay in jail. On that day, he weighed 185 pounds and was well-nourished.

A little over a year later, Larry Eugene Price Jr. was found unresponsive in his prison cell, "lying in a pool of standing water and urine." EMTs tried and failed to save him, partly because they were unable to quickly use a defibrillator on him because of the standing water situation. He was later determined to have died from acute dehydration and malnutrition. He had starved to death, weighing 90 pounds when he passed. His feet were also severely deformed from having been in standing water for however long that was an issue. The skin on them was wilted and pruney from "prolonged moisture exposure."

Price Jr. had refused food and medication while imprisoned, as a result of his psychological issues, and the jail was not equipped to deal with that. Rather than releasing him or putting him someplace better equipped to take care of him, they just let him starve to death. Because of his behavioral issues, they also kept him in solitary confinement and rarely even let him out for the one hour a day he was supposed to receive. Naturally, all of this worsened his condition, which led to him being treated even more severely and avoided by correctional officers. So he was, quite literally, left in his cell to rot.

Now his family is filing a lawsuit against Sebastian County and Turn Key Health Clinics LLC, the jail's Oklahoma-based health provider, in order to hold them accountable for what they did to him. (I must warn you, there are pictures of Price Jr. in the lawsuit, so if you click over to look, prepare yourself. Because they're bad. They're really, really bad. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.)

Price Jr. shouldn't have been put in jail to begin with, given that his behavior was directly caused by his psychological conditions. He should not have been held there for a year because he could not afford $100 to get out. Jail officials, correction officers and the health care workers charged with his care should have done something, should have taken him someplace where he could have been better cared for by people qualified to do so.

None of this ever, ever should have happened. Unfortunately in many states, such as Arkansas, there are no laws or regulations to prevent it from happening. It is perfectly legal to keep someone who hasn't been convicted of a crime in jail for a year because they can't afford $100 bail on account of how they are unhoused and do not have a job. The people responsible for what happened to Price are not, themselves, going to prison, because what they did is not "technically" illegal. Like so many other things that should probably be illegal, this is the kind of situation where you just have to wait for someone to die horribly before anyone can be held to account for anything — and even then, only through a lawsuit.

According to the Prison Policy Institute, there are more than 400,000 people being held in pre-trial detention in the United States at any given time. People who have not been convicted of any crime. In many cases, this is not because they are violent or a threat to society but simply because they cannot afford to leave. This number has quadrupled since the 1980s.

It is time to get the hell over the goddamned 1988 presidential election so that we can do what is necessary to prevent these kinds of things from happening. It was 35 years ago! People have changed. Voters have changed. They have seen the effects of "tough on crime" policies and the War on Drugs and they do not like them. We need bail reform. We need funding for mental health programs. We need for police to have absolutely nothing to do with dealing with people experiencing mental health issues. And we need to put cases like Price Jr.'s front and center so that people who are not yet with the program know exactly why we need reform.

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