Criminalization instead of care?
Mother hopes prison will give son treatment
Shelia Muldrow sat in her usual courtroom pew. Her son had another criminal hearing. In the coming hours, she did not know what to expect.
The mother had feared for her 23-year-old since his teenage years. His bipolar disorder and drug use sent him into manic, aggressive fits. He became unrecognizable at times. Life could feel like a nightmare. But she loved him, fiercely.
Periodically over the
past 18 months, Shelia had pushed aside her information security job to drive from her home in northwest Harris County to the court in Fort Bend. She wished desperately for someone to help her son manage his illness — even though he did not see the need for it.
Now his case neared an end. If the judge sent him to prison, he would not die on the street. He would be safe. He would get medicine. It was not ideal, but was it the best solution?
Then she heard it, the sound of fists hitting metal, coming from the holding cell off the courtroom. Clang. Clang. Clang. Shelia, 55, suspected it was her son, Warren. It was. He pounded on the window, asking for his lawyer, he later said. His mother could do nothing but wait. She stared ahead.
‘Worst place to be’
Parents in Texas know Shelia’s desperation. She is far from the first with nowhere to turn except the criminal justice system for help with a mentally ill child.
Texas in recent years ranked 49th in per capita mental health spending. While strapped systems exist for people thought to be a danger to themselves or to others, limited options are in place to help them remain stable in the periods in between.
If parents do not want a volatile child with mental illness at home or on the streets, advocates note that scant affordable options exist where that person might live, receive treatment and find stability. Often, as happened with Warren, they move to group homes, get kicked out and land in jail, a place not intended to treat mental health — an irony not lost on Glenn Urbach, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater Houston.
“Everyday there are people going to jail who committed crimes because they’ re on the street,” Urbach said. “It’s the worst place to be for the mentally ill, and it’s the best treatment facility for millions of Texans.”
The system makes criminals of those ravaged by illness. Still, Shelia hoped it could help Warren. Otherwise, what else was left?
Cycle of jails, hospitals
So far, it had been a grueling process of failed attempts.
Shelia had seen Warren’s outlook change little since his arrest Nov. 16, 2015, at a group home on a terroristic threat charge.
He thrice dialed 911 and slurred profane threats at police that morning, days after the Paris Bataclan theater terrorist attack. Rather than take Warren to a hospital, Fort Bend deputies ushered him to jail.
News of his arrest struck Shelia as yet another issue to face. Her son had committed crimes before. She knew the embarrassment of telling others he sat in a lock-up.
She wanted the cycle of jail and emergency room visits to stop, a desire she held as she sat again in that pew.
“He still hasn’t had any treatment,” she said, waiting for proceedings to start.
Shelia always pushed for the result of Warren’s crime to be treatment. But each idea they tried failed to help her jailed son.
First, Warren went on probation, with mental health conditions. He flunked. Law enforcement took him to a hospital. He allegedly struck someone. Houston police booked him into jail. A judge dismissed his case, and he returned to the streets until Fort Bend took him back.
Fort Bend transferred him next to Austin State Hospital, but not for long. The aging facility, pressed for space, sent him back after 24 days.
Warren finally tried a probation substance abuse program in prison. He went in and out of the psychiatric wing there. Winter holidays passed. They kicked him out Jan. 31.
It seemed that Warren had quickly exhausted every possibility. Nothing obvious remained to try. The court set another hearing.
“I don’t know what options are left,” the judge said in February.
His attorney returned in April with tenuous ideas.
“I’d like something a little more definitive,” the judge said.
Warren stabilized some in those months, becoming more like the child she remembered, Shelia conceded. She thanked the medicine for that.
Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office Major Thomas Goodfellow called the jail’s mental health offerings, including group therapy and tablets with self-help applications, among the “most progressive, cutting edge and dedicated” in the state. “Inmates with mental health issues are definitely a priority,” he wrote in a statement. But to Shelia’s knowledge, no one had succeeded in helping Warren further along.
Warren’s bipolar disorder influenced his behavior. Did that mean he was doomed never to get help?
Still ‘very manic’
And so Shelia returned one last time, on May 31, to the 240th district court.
Here, Warren’s case was one of many. Attorneys swung in and out. Judge Chad Bridges, drinking from a mug, squared away other issues.
Warren’s public defender, Overzenia Ojuri, who specializes in mental health, greeted Shelia then disappeared. She convened with the county’s behavioral health services director, Connie Al me ida, in a private room.
Almeida had recently evaluated Warren. She found him stable enough to continue with court proceedingsbut, after recent reports, requested more time to evaluate him.
“He continues to be very manic,” she told Judge Bridges.
Shelia didn’ t want to keep waiting. She expected Warren didn’t either.
The banging began. Warren entered the courtroom 90 minutes later. Tired of sitting in jail, he decided his own fate: he wanted to enter a guilty plea.
He would get what he wished if no one saw evidence that he was not mentally fit.
Warren wore another inmate’s oversized glasses. He stood tall and thin but muscular. A tattoo of his name stood out on his forehead.
His father shut his eyes. No one knew how this would go.
Judge Bridges accepted the plea. He sentenced him to two years in prison, the minimum for his felony charge. With 376 days credit for time served, Warren would likely soon be out on parole.
A charmer, Warren said in an interview the next day that he expected to find a girl with whom to live. Though he never received his high school diploma — he drove his car off the road and spiralled out of control before graduation — he doesn’t believe returning to school after his release from jail or prison made sense. He figured he could be a tattoo artist.
He liked his medicine, which made him calm. And he recognized his illness. But he did not want therapy or help, even from his mother.
In court, the judge encouraged Warren to do all he could not to end up back in shackles.
“That’ s up to you ,” he told Warren.
It remains to be seen whether the young man will walk out of jail any better off than when he started.
Warren’s parole likely will include mental health care. If it does, and if he remains in Fort Bend, the local mental health authority, called Texana, will facilitate that. Its wait list to aid parolees such as Warren was recently 10 people long.
Texana, however, cannot force him or anyone else to show up for the programming, said Shena Timberlake, Texana’s director of behavioral health services. Officials hope a judge’s encouragement is enough. Texana does its best to encourage participation.
“Sometimes we’ re successfuland sometimes we’ re not,” Timberlake said. “It doesn’t always happen immediately.”
This reality can be harsh to face. Timberlake has seen first-hand how vicious the cycle can look for those who don’ t get the prescribed help.
Older and cheaper medications used by most jails wear off quickly, Timber lake noted. Symptoms of illness that take over can prevent someone from understanding they need help. They become vulnerable again to landing behind bars. Or worse.
A mother’s trust
After Warren’s hearing, his attorney and the county behavioral health services director, Almeida, said they would try to help ease the transition. Funded services available paled in comparison to other states, Almeida acknowledged — but were improving. She had to trust enough existed to help Warren recover.
Shelia walked out of the courtroom one final time.
It was hard to expect Warren’s life would change. But Shelia chose optimism. She wished that this might yet be Warren’s chance at treatment, though she lamented he had to be convicted of a crime to get it.
She was his mother. In the man others saw as unruly, unsympathetic and unlikable, she saw her son.
She had to hope.