Jail Is No Place for the Mentally Ill

After our son’s story was told in “A Christmas Story, Sort Of,” we would like to create a greater awareness about the mental health crisis within the Santa Barbara jail. We feel an urgency about the injustice and inhumanity taking place and being committed against the mentally ill.

Everyone knows that jails were made for criminals, not for people who are sick. As far as we understand, our son, Francisco Aledo, has not been found guilty of any crime, and he is presumed innocent unless proven otherwise, not the other way around. Unfortunately, after two-and-a-half going on to three years, and contrary to the idea of justice, he is being treated as someone already paying a prison sentence before going to trial.

If Francisco is truly guilty of anything, his only crime is to be born a victim of an incurable but treatable illness. For this reason, we urge the judicial system to once again take charge and do everything within its power to have Francisco or anyone in a similar condition, transferred to a psychiatric facility as soon as possible to receive desperately needed mental health treatment. We would like to denounce that the longer Francisco remains in jail, the worse will his condition become. We have already witnessed the consequences every time we are in contact. We notice how much his condition has deteriorated, fallen to the lowest level we have ever seen. Because our son failed to follow a periodic treatment plan and remained unmedicated, he began to decompensate which precipitated a decline into a state of crisis. At the time of arrest, instead of jail, he should have been taken to a crisis intervention center.