Philippe Bourgois-- Incarceration and Mental Illness: Lessons from the Los Angeles County Jail

Philippe Bourgois
Date
Thu February 16th 2023, 12:00 - 1:45pm
Event Sponsor
The Program on Urban Studies

Co-sponsors: American Studies, Anthropology, Bill Lane Center for the American West, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Center for Global Ethnography, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Public Policy, Sociology, Stanford Criminal Justice Center
Location
McClatchy Hall, Building 120, Studio 40 (2 floors below ground level)

We invite you to attend the Program on Urban Studies' 16th Annual Model Scholar Lecture, Incarceration and Mental Illness: Lessons from the Los Angeles County Jail, with Philippe Bourgois, Professor of Psychiatry/Social Medicine and Anthropology at UCLA. 

Abstract: The United States has become a caricatural case of cruel, expensive mismanagement/repression of individuals on the psychosis spectrum. Drawing on historical data and too many years of participant observation ethnographic fieldwork on inner-city streets among people who use and/or sell drugs and cycle chronically through carceral facilities (1980s-present), I will trace the specific policies and structural political economic forces (predatory accumulation) that have turned the Los Angeles County Jail into the world's largest de facto psychiatric facility.

Appearing on Video: This talk will include a video appearance of Craigen Armstrong. After serving 12 years on death row, Mr. Armstrong is confined at the Los Angeles County Jail awaiting a new trial. In jail,  he co-founded and is an administrator of the jail's Mental Health Assistance Program. He will talk about developing and managing a peer support program for inmates with serious mental illnesses.