Mehrhoff PoemVilma/Vilma Ginzberg's New Book "Snake Pit"/Caged Mentally Ill Also in California State Prisons/

That snap in the air,
some other poet
has broken the language.

- Charlie Mehrhoff in Lilliput Review


New from Round Barn Press and Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg



















where the scar is

touch me where I’m tender
touch me where I yield
touch me where you mustn”t
there the scar is

touch me where I’m hungry
touch me where I hurt
touch me where you mustn’t
where the scar is

touch me where I’m lonely
touch me where I weep
touch me where you mustn’t
where the scar is

touch me where I’m frozen
touch me where I cringe
touch me where you mustn’t
where the scar is

touch me in the never
touch me in the not
touch me in the nowhere
touch me touch me not
where the scar is


touch me when I trust you
touch me when I ask
touch me when I’m ready
where the scar is



touch me with your kindness
touch me where I know
touch me make me tougher
where the scar was


To obtain an autographed copy of Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg's Snake Pit. send a check for $10. to Vilma Ginzberg at 316 Cypress Circle, Healdsburg, CA 95448

Some Previous Round Barn Press Chapbooks

Richard Krech - Some Global Positioning Dharma
Rychard Denner - Calendar of the Moon
Ed Coletti - Peace Planters, Family Matters 
     and Jazz Gods
David Madgalene  - Kali
Justin Adkins - Dream Climber
Bill Vartnaw - Postcards

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comments of others too. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous"
if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name.
Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at
edcoletti@sbcglobal.net if you have difficulty.

• 

Therapist Daniel Tennenbaum plays guitar during a prison therapy session.… (Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times)

Objections raised to caging inmates during therapy

Prisoners with psychiatric problems must be treated, and the therapists must be protected, but many question the state's approach.

December 28, 2010|By Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

Before group therapy begins for mentally ill maximum-security inmates at California prisons, five patients are led in handcuffs to individual metal cages about the size of a phone booth. Steel mesh and a plastic spit shield separate the patients from the therapist, who sits in front of the enclosures wearing a shank-proof vest.

When the lock clanks shut on the final cage — prison officials prefer to call them "therapeutic modules" — the therapist tries to build the foundation of any successful group: trust.

During a recent session at a prison in Vacaville, psychologist Daniel Tennenbaum, wearing a herringbone sports coat over his body armor, sat just out of urination range of the cages with an acoustic guitar, trying to engage the inmates with a sing-along of "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay."

About a decade ago, a federal judge ruled that it was cruel and unusual punishment to leave mentally ill prisoners in their cells without treatment. Since then, state prisons have spent more than a billion dollars delivering care to an ever-growing population of inmates diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric problems.

State officials say they have not tried to estimate how much of that cost is attributable to the caged therapy. The value of the sessions, however, is the subject of heated debate among mental health professionals today.

"Those cages are an abomination. They train people that they're not human, that they're animals," said Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist in Berkeley who served as an expert witness on treatment of mentally ill prisoners in the case that forced California prisons to provide psychiatric care.

"It's bizarre, it has a Hannibal Lecter quality to it," said H. Steven Moffic, likening California's procedures to the measures used to contain an incarcerated serial killer in "The Silence of the Lambs."

Moffic, a psychiatry professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, has written about treating patients in prisons under less imposing restraints. "I'm not quite sure what the clinicians think they are going to get out of it," he said of California's method.

Prison officials say they're doing their best to comply with the court order, which requires them to offer treatment to all mentally ill inmates, no matter how dangerous.

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net if you have difficulty.