Crockett's plan is based in his experiences at Chester. His plan does not deny that some prisoners may need or want medication either temporarily or permanently. It also does not deny the reality of mental disability or distance Blackness from it. Rather, this plan gives agency and acknowledges that prisoners mental capacity and stability may change over time. It gives back agency to those like Crockett who were being help in psychiatric, medical, and prison institutions under and assumption that they are incompetent.

Crockett's Improvement Plan as Disability Politics

Crockett in his letter to the editor presented some changes he would like to be made to psychiatric care, including that patients in security hospitals who are not presenting violent actions or reactions should have the right to appear in court every 90 days to appeal their cases, and in particular whether they need medication. This appeal should be heard according to Crockett by both a judge and a court appointed psychiatrist.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

1) A Note on Identity Language Used by Crockett
2) Crockett's experience with Overmedicalization 
3) Crockett's Improvement Plan as Disability Politics

January 24, 1976 Letter to the Editor by Kevin Crockett

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

Schalk notes that in his writings Crockett described himself as currently incarcerated in the Chester Mental Health Center in Chester, Illinois after being found incompetent to stand trial for robbery in Chicago. Crocket uses the work incarcerated rather than committed or treated. While this may have just been a personal preference on Crockett's part based on his experiences of medical racism, this wording also helps in framing Crockett's experience as one more akin to prison rather than therapeutic psychiatric/medical care.

A Note on Identity Language Used by Crockett

In the Letter to the Editor Crockett described how he was compelled to take medication four times a day because his psychiatrist said he had an explosive personality. When those incarcerated at Chester refused to take medication they were either compelled through force or given medication through a shot. 
Crockett also uses the rhetoric that he is "supposed to be a schizophrenic" this wording of "supposed to be" encourages readers to question the validity of this diagnosis given by an establishment psychiatrist.

Crockett's Experience with Over Medicalization

Crockett's Plan for Improving Psychiatric Care

We know the Black Panther was delivered to people in some prisons as a means of connection, education, and empowerment. There is also evidence that it was delivered to those in psychiatric institutions with the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola having its own chapter of the Black Panther Party. The Letters to the Editor from Crockett and Anderson also suggest that the paper was distributed near some prisons hospital wards. The Black Panther as highlighted in Anderson's piece was essential for folks developing their own critical perspective on their own confinement in mental hospitals. 

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