The sad case of mental patient Jonathan López Jiménez, reported on June 17 in this newspaper, once again exposes a serious flaw in our criminal justice system that has led to similar tragedies for years and requires urgent attention and action by the government.
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López Jiménez, 24, was diagnosed at age 18 with paranoid schizophrenia, one of the most serious mental illnesses. As a result of his condition, he has exhibited belligerent and threatening behavior toward family members and neighbors.
Although everyone knows that his actions are a consequence of his illness, the state’s only response to his problems has been the criminal justice system, which has led to him being sent to prison four times. On one occasion, he nearly died from an intestinal condition that was apparently not treated in time. He has been in prison since December last year without a verdict against him.
Shamefully, his case is not unique. For years, people with mental illnesses have been imprisoned indefinitely without trial for one simple reason: the government has not taken this population seriously and, therefore, has not allocated the necessary resources to determine within a reasonable time frame a person’s capacity to stand trial and, if not prosecutable, to refer them to appropriate treatment in the civil sphere, as required by law.
The government has also failed to develop protocols or provide resources to ensure that mental health patients in crisis receive medical care rather than criminal justice treatment. Jonathan’s case illustrates this point better than most: when his family asked for help in caring for a schizophrenic in the midst of a crisis, the state took him to prison rather than to a hospital.
Newspapers are full of stories of police interventions with mental health patients that end in tragedy. The most recent occurred on May 16. On that date, the police were charged with the death of a former soldier who was suffering a psychotic crisis in Utuado.
Puerto Rico cannot continue to tolerate this. The treatment of mental patients in the criminal justice system is unfair, inhumane, and cruel. We urge the government to give this issue the importance it deserves and to address it with determination.
There are several ways to begin addressing the problem. The Legislative Assembly approved a measure by legislators María de Lourdes Santiago and Adrián González that would prohibit the incarceration for more than six months—the maximum allowed by the Constitution to prosecute an accused person—of individuals awaiting a determination on their prosecutability.
The Legal Aid Society (SAL) estimates that there are currently more than 200 inmates with mental health issues who are permanently incarcerated because in 2010 the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico ruled that the six-month term is suspended while their capacity to stand trial is being determined. We invite Governor Jenniffer González to sign this bill.
We also urge an increase in the number of beds in forensic psychiatric hospitals to prevent defendants from having to wait months—or even years—for care. We applaud the plans of the Administration of Mental Health and Services (Assmca) to open a new forensic psychiatric hospital in Ponce, which already has funding allocated and is in the design stage.
Similarly, it is essential that the government review mental health crisis intervention protocols so that it is not only the police who respond to these cases.
These are feasible measures that would undoubtedly help reduce the immense human suffering associated with this issue. But there is another urgent task that concerns society as a whole: a person with mental illness is not a criminal, but someone who is ill, and in all areas of collective life, we must understand and treat them as such.
Once we understand this basic fact, everything else falls into place.
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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.
