The lackadaisical handling of mental health and its funding has consequentially turned prisons and jail across the world to homes of the mentally ill i.e. default mental health facilities. Photographer Jenn Ackerman visited the Kentucky State Reformatory, and took these haunting images of mentally ill trapped inside the prison.
She had no choice but to make the images in black-and-white for her series titled ‘Trapped,’ where she tells the story of the mentally ill in today’s prisons; inspired by the article she read in the New York Times on the growing population of mentally ill inmates in US prisons.
“My intention was to make the viewer feel what I felt when I was inside the prison,” Ackerman said.
This inmate was tied down by the officers after threatening to kill himself, whilst banging the cell door hours.
I do believe we need our mental health put back .and we also need prison reform ,,,I watched my little brother die in prison,,he was mentally ill,,and prison was no place to be,thank you for caring,and bring this to people attendion,
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