Getting Away With Murder (Paperback) | Released: 02 Aug 2014

About the Book

THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS HAS BANNED MY BOOK! The FDC doesn't want the truth to come out: It is the most corrupt, brutal agency in all of Florida.

America is experiencing a mental health crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Fifty years ago, shocking conditions and abuses in psychiatric facilities resulted in nationwide closures with no viable plan to provide care for former and future patients. For the severely mentally ill, ever diminishing funding for mental health has resulted in a de facto return to the Middle Ages. In a justice system that criminalizes mental illness, people who desperately need mental health services are instead routinely rounded up and thrown into prisons for no more than a manifestation of their psychiatric conditions.

Having worked as a psychotherapist for nearly three years in a Florida state prison psychiatric unit, George Mallinckrodt experienced firsthand the ultimate consequences of failed national and state mental health policies. With high hopes, 20 years of counseling experience, and a determination to make a difference, he dove headlong into the miasma of prison counseling.

Join Mallinckrodt on the front lines in an eye-opening odyssey peppered with patients suffering a range of mental illness from paranoid schizophrenia to garden variety depression. George provided counseling to men who committed every crime imaginable-even grave robbery.

Getting Away With Murder is an insider's account of a prison psychiatric ward in which the aberrant and bizarre are daily occurrences. Honest, unflinching, and darkly humorous, Mallinckrodt's memoir is populated with a host of colorful characters-patients and mental health staff alike.

About the Author: THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS HAS BANNED MY BOOK! The FDC doesn't want the truth to come out: It is the most corrupt, brutal agency in all of Florida. For nearly three years, I worked as a psychotherapist in a Florida state prison psychiatric ward where severely mentally ill patients on my caseload were abused, starved, taunted, tormented, and beaten by correctional officers. After a patient on my caseload was beaten by guards, my attempts to raise the issue of patient abuse were met with silence. My vociferous advocacy for the humane treatment of our patients ended in my dismissal. Ten months after my departure, guards put a man named Darren Rainey in a boiling hot shower and scalded him to death. Deeply impacted by Rainey's horrific death, I became an advocate for his justice on a local level. Early efforts included a meeting with FBI agents and filing a complaint with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, Special Litigation Section. The complaint provided secondhand details of Darren Rainey's murder and a host of other abuses I witnessed in my former unit. Two and a half years after I spoke with FBI agents, the Miami Herald reported that the DOJ had initiated a criminal investigation into Rainey's death. Frustrated by futile attempts to interest authorities in Rainey's murder, I started writing a whistleblower account about my experiences. Two years later, I published GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER, a book that provides readers with an unprecedented perspective into the treatment of the mentally ill. My objective in writing a book detailing the horrific conditions mentally ill patients face was to generate outrage among the public. In May of 2014, the Miami Herald published the first of over 100 articles about the brutality and cover-up scandal that has rocked the Florida Department of Corrections. My former unit was featured in the first article. I immediately contacted Herald reporter Julie Brown and described a unit plagued by patient abuse that included beatings. Subsequently, I have been quoted in more than a dozen Miami Herald stories. Recently, a journalist from the New Yorker Magazine interviewed me for a story slated to appear March or April 2016. I plan to capitalize on this opportunity by taking the Florida prison brutality story to the national level as a means to advocate for prison reform, the humane treatment of the mentally ill, and ending mass incarceration for those suffering from severe mental illness.