Crazy In America Summary

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Recommended: Treatment in American prisons

In the book Crazy in America by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, she illustrated examples of what people with mental illness endure every day in their encounters with the criminal justice system. Shayne Eggen, Peter Nadir, Alan Houseman and Joseph Maldonado are amongst those thousands or more people who are view as suspected when in reality they are psychotic who should be receiving medical assistance instead, of been thrown into prison. Their stories also show how our society has failed to provide some of its most vulnerable citizens and has allowed them to be treated as a criminals. All of these people shared a common similarity which is their experience they went through due to their illness. The author first introduces the story of Shayne Eggen, …show more content…

Unlike Shayne, Jessica, and Joseph, Peter and Alan’s story with the criminal system was different. Peter and Alan had little in common besides having mental illness and dying at the hands of untrained cops. Peter was born within a very abusive family, and he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Pfeiffer describes Peter as “slow and simple, and his childhood was as tumultuous”(131). Whereas Alan was bright enough to get into University of Tampa which was interrupted because of his mental deterioration. Overtime, Alan’s behavior changed to be intense and aggressive. After being hospitalized, his mother took care of him up until her death, it was then that things intensive for him. Alan was large sized and he hated cops. One day, due to assumption of a female officer, Alan was shot and killed. According to the officer “crazy people are unpredictable” (127). Likewise, with time Peter’s behavior also changed especially with his mother. Peter had taken violent actions towards his mother. The criminal system was them involved and from that point on he was no longer looked at as a mentally ill 205-pound individual, yet as a criminal, who refused arrest, and his action “determined how they treated him” (120). Just like Alan he was killed during an arrest, he was suffocated by the cops. Their encountered with the cops could’ve been different if those cops were trained to recognize the symptoms of psychosis and if they knew how to respond to

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