# Mental health as a disciplinary problem

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Mental health as a disciplinary problem," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mental-health-as-a-disciplinary-problem/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou has said that before his own prosecution he never gave five seconds of thought to the American prison system, and that living inside it showed him a broken one — in particular a system in which mental health is treated as a disciplinary problem rather than a medical one.*

- **Before prison:** "Not five seconds of thought"
- **Central objection:** Mental health treated as a disciplinary problem
- **Also cited:** No rehabilitation, no education
- **Told to:** Peter B. Collins, 19 May 2017

Asked whether prison had changed his perceptions of groups or types of people, Kiriakou said it had, very much so, and then widened the answer into an indictment of the system itself.[1]

## Before

Before he got into trouble, he said, he did not give five seconds of thought to the justice system, or certainly to the prison system. Not five seconds of thought.[2] Living through it made him realise what a broken system it is.[2]

## The list of failures

His complaint is not a single one but a sequence, each item stated as a problem in its own right. That the United States has a quarter of the world's prisoners is a problem. That there is no rehabilitation and no education inside is a problem. That one in four black men in America is either in prison or jail or on probation or parole is a problem.[2][3]

Between those, and stated in the same form, is the one that has no obvious counterpart in the usual arguments about incarceration rates: *"when mental health is treated as a disciplinary problem, that's a problem."*[3]

His summary of the American response to all of this is that the country does not see it as a problem at all — and he pointed to an attorney general who wanted to reimpose mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes as evidence of the direction of travel.[3]

## Where the population comes from

The second half of Kiriakou's argument concerns the route in. You really get to see, he said, what happens in a community where everybody is poor, where people have no educational background or foundation in even basic education, and where they have no job skills. They end up in prison.[4]

That framing matters for how he treats the men he met inside. Kiriakou is unsparing about some categories of prisoner and has said flatly that some people are too dangerous to live among us. But the general population at a low-security federal prison, on his account, is not there because the system failed to deter them; it is there because a set of prior failures — schooling, work, treatment — had already run their course, and the prison is where they are counted.

## See also

- [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto)
- [Kiriakou on mass incarceration](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mass-incarceration-critique)
- [Three Square Meals And A Warm Bed](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/three-square-meals-and-a-warm-bed)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 30:22. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1822s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
2. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 30:54. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1854s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
3. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 31:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1885s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/
4. In-Depth Interview - Former CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks About His Prison Experience (2017-05-19), at 31:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddfe68a43b&t=1916s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-19-peter-b-collins-show-in-depth-interview-former-cia-officer-john-ki/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mental-health-as-a-disciplinary-problem/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt