Letter: Mental illness is not a crime

I started not to listen to On Point radio on April 14 because I am tired of hearing about the dysfunctional justice system. But I listened and thought of the proposals that are usually on the ballot to add cells and enlarge the jail capacity in Iowa City.

The guests and host Tom Ashbrook connected mental health, jail warehousing, as well as poor non-violent offenders kept without recourse. I thought of Gov. Terry Branstad closing down and underfunding mental health facilities, his support of expunging criminal records of juveniles and his refusal to support the voting rights of felons who have paid their debt to society.

As American citizens, we used to believe in innocent until proven guilty and that it is better to let 10 guilty go free, than to allow one innocent person to be incarcerated. The guilty know why they are in jail, but the innocent suffer unjustly.

I am not saying that the guilty should not be punished. What I am saying that under the neo-liberalism that we the people have been oppressed under since the 1990s, in the name of privatization and globalism: the poor mentally ill are subjugated under an unfair justice system; the rich are presumed innocent because they possess wealth.

Under American neo-liberalism, to be sick bodily is a tragedy, but to be mentally ill a crime.

Mary Gravitt

Iowa City