• Larry Eugene Price Jr., a severely mentally ill man living in poverty in Fort Smith, Arkansas, died in jail after spending a year in pretrial solitary confinement.
• Price was arrested after he began yelling and cursing at officers at the police station, and was charged with “terroristic threatening in the first degree.”
• Price was unable to post bail, and was placed in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, seven days a week.
• His mental health deteriorated, and he refused to take his prescribed medication. He eventually stopped eating and drinking, and was found unresponsive in a pool of standing water and urine.
• Price’s death is a consequence of systemic issues in the American criminal justice system, including criminalizing poverty and the torture of solitary confinement.
• People with mental illnesses are more likely to be incarcerated than given proper treatment, and many police lack the training to respond to mental health crises.
Published January 19, 2023
Visit Popular Information to read Judd Legum’s original post The untimely death of Larry Price Jr.
