‘Everyone is astounded’: Francine Kiefer on the calming power of brotherly love

Episode transcript

Ashley Lisenby: Welcome to “Rethinking the News” by The Christian Science Monitor. I’m Ashley Lisenby, one of its producers. Each holiday season, editors and writers discuss some of the most meaningful stories of the year. This year, staff will discuss stories that exemplify five main themes: faith, gratitude, love, hope, and joy. Today’s theme is love. 

Listen as Monitor Staff Editor Ali Martin and writer Francine Kiefer discuss how the work of two inmates addressing mental health issues in the Los Angeles County Jail reflects brotherly love.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Ali Martin: Francine, your piece about mental health assistants Craigen Armstrong and Adrian Berumen was powerful. They’re incarcerated at the Los Angeles County Jail. Tell us how you learned about these men and what drew you to their stories?

Francine Kiefer: Sure, it was actually a Monitor subscriber who put me on to this story. She volunteers as a chaplain in the psychiatric wards of the jail. She sent me an email about these two men and said they’ve made a big difference helping incarcerated people who have been diagnosed with severe mental illness. They even published a book from jail about their groundbreaking work. The reason their story interested me is because there’s such a need for mental health services in jails in America. The LA County Jail is the biggest jail in the country. And it has about 5,000 people who are struggling with mental health issues. Experts told me that many of them really shouldn’t even be in jail, they should be in a setting where they can get treatment. But for lack of community services, America’s jails have become de facto mental health facilities. So when I learned that Craigen and Adrian are on the front lines of a program that is helping these people, I wanted to learn more about it.

Martin: Tell us a little bit about the difference between the pods where Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Berumen are working, compared with other units in the jail that don’t have mental health assistants.

Kiefer: Most of the incarcerated men who are dealing with mental health issues are jailed downtown in the Twin Towers facility. About 3,500 of them are pretty stable and are under moderate observation. But about, oh, 900 to 1,000 men are under what’s called high observation. And these are the really challenging cases. Jail officials admit they’re totally overwhelmed with the numbers. And you can see that in the units that don’t have mental health assistants, which is most of the units. In these pods, incarcerated men are wearing padded robes to prevent them from harming themselves. And when they’re let out of their cells and into common areas, they’re chained to tables with handcuffs so they can’t attack anybody. Sometimes people are hallucinating and screaming. Sometimes they throw feces.

Craigen and Adrian’s situation is very different. They work on a floor that receives men who have been discharged from the forensic inpatient hospital. And these patients are also under high observation, and they’re among the most severely mentally ill in the jail. But their pods are cheerful looking and orderly. They don’t smell. They aren’t noisy. When the patients are not in their cells, they can walk about freely and take part in group activities like karaoke.

Martin: What accounts for the difference?

Kiefer: Well, Craigen and Adrian not only work with these men, they live with them. They are incarcerated right alongside them. They get to know them. And as peers, they earn their trust. The assistants don’t dispense medication, I want to be clear about that. But they are able to convince the patients to take their meds, which is a feat in itself. The assistants also assign chores and give out rewards so the patients keep the pods spick and span. Another big reason for the difference is a woman named Sarah Tong. She’s the on-site psychiatric technician and she has worked very closely with Adrian and Craigen in developing this program. She’s also tried to make the common areas look really homey. She brought in big plastic rocking chairs and house plants. And she even has a tiny aquarium with beta fish. And now there’s little turtles.

Martin: How often do you have two people in jail in a position to help other incarcerated people, and they realized this opportunity? How do they take it to the next step?

Kiefer: Both men took it upon themselves to learn about mental health. The assistants really have become mentors to the men, and now the professionals consult with them about the patients. Of course, all of this took a whole lot of support from the assistant sheriff on down, and everyone is astounded by the results. Self-harming is six times less compared to other units.

Martin: Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Beruman are getting a lot of attention for the success of this program. What’s next for it?

Kiefer: Well, the goal is to expand this program and bring it to a new pod every 90 days. But progress is really slow. Not every new mental health assistant has worked out. When my story was published in May, Craigen and Adrian had interviewed and trained two new assistants, and the program was operating in three pods. Since then, they’ve expanded to four pods and are about to go to a fifth. 

Martin: We’re here doing this podcast because this story highlights brotherly love. Tell me more about how you saw that in their work.

Kiefer: One of the volunteers at the jail shared a really touching conversation with me. The volunteer is Philippe Bourgois and he is a professor of psychiatry and anthropology at the University of California in LA. He says that when Adrian and Craigen came to him and asked to be taught about basic mental illness, they said they had no knowledge. He did arrange for materials and seminars. But his answer to them was that they had already figured out the most important part of treating mental illness. Their brilliant insight was that people crave love. They don’t want to be alone. And people battling mental illness are often social outcasts. But Craigen and Adrian just embrace them. Craigen can spend hours standing outside a cell door, listening and talking with a patient in crisis. One time a patient was hallucinating and screaming about spiders under the bed. Of course, Craigen took a broom and swept out the nonexistent spiders. And then he comforted the man.

The mental health assistants also physically care for the men, like they cut their hair. It’s not easy living around the clock with people who are having episodes, who are physically attacking you and disrespecting you. These two guys never take a day off. They respond whether it’s the middle of the night or the middle of the day. Adrian told me this experience has taught him how to love. He explained it as the difference between sympathy and empathy. With empathy, you’re willing to listen and feel the way they feel. He describes a huge amount of gentleness and kindness in the pods. He called it supernatural. In other parts of the jail, he said, you’re not going to hear someone say, “Hey, man, I love you. You’re going to be OK.” Craigen also said something rather extraordinary. When patients are violent and disrespectful. It’s not their fault. It’s not really them. And that it’s love that allows him to see past that behavior and still support them.

Martin: That is quite an impact. How were you affected by this story? 

Kiefer: Of all the stories I reported on this year, this is my absolute favorite. It shows how the persistence and love of just two individuals could grow in a very dark place when they were given the opportunity and the support they needed. And because of that, everyone has been blessed. The patients, the mental health professionals, and the deputies. It’s really living proof of the power of redemption.

Martin: I think that’s true, Francine. And I think too, to most people jail represents being trapped. There is seemingly no agency when a person is in jail. But these two men proved that that’s just not true. The more they helped others, the more opportunity they had to keep doing more good. And that’s really what I took away from this story that there’s always a way to be loving and to do good, and to help some people, even when it feels like you have absolutely no power or control in a situation. Thank you so much for doing this story. It really does show us the power of brotherly love and redemption.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

Lisenby: Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, share it with your friends. Or even better, give them the gift of Monitor journalism. Visit CSMonitor.com/Holiday for our discounted holiday offer.

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