Baker

Over a lot of years, I've written quite a bit about James Baker. NGRI for murder, Thiem date June, 2025, getting free room & board at EMHC and nobody there apparently interested at all, in getting him out. 

No EMHC administrative staff attended James' monthly staffing today, just three hapless Hartman Unit treatment team members. Perfectly pleasant, no complaints at all about James' behavior, etc. But they also had absolutely nothing to say about anyone wanting to get this patient released before he Thiems out in a little over a year and a half. 

Usually, an administrator named Dr. Martha Welch attends. The last time we saw her was a couple months ago. On that occasion, she promised to find out when James might be scheduled for his fourth time through the "Community Reintegration Program," which is considered (quite incredibly if you ask me) to be important before a petition for James' conditional release can be put together.

Today Martha didn't show up to be asked what she had found out. That's probably because she hasn't found anything out, and maybe she never intended to find anything out. Some staff member who specializes in community reintegration has been on an extended LOA, and nobody knows when that staff member will be back. 

Who knows why that staff member is on extended LOA? Maybe she's being investigated for sexually abusing a patient, there sure is plenty of that at Elgin. Or maybe she joined the growing exodus of mental health professionals headed out the door for more honest jobs. Anyway, the "Community Reintegration Program" is utter nonsense in James' case. It is in most cases, but especially here, when the patient has done it three times already! 

So, Baker languishes at EMHC, for no rational purpose. The reason is bureaucratic incompetence, lack of caring. It's too easy to ignore James, and he does get ignored, completely. He's an easy slave to keep, they don't even have to drug him. His judge would grant a conditional release easily, if some semi-conscious human could go to court and say this patient isn't a danger now: he's old and gentle, well behaved, and he can barely walk. They could even brag that they cured him!

Baker is only three or four credits short of a bachelor's degree in computer science, by the way. But nobody can figure out how to let him use a facility computer to register for the last courses that would make him a college graduate. Some idiot named Dillard has told him his caseworker should handle that, but she was sitting there in the staffing today, and had no suggestions other than referring the issue back to the idiot Dillard. These guys are cogs in the wheels of a very dumb machine!

I've rarely if ever seen such easy, glib neglect. Maybe James isn't all that anxious to get out. After all, he's been a slave on the Elgin plantation for most of his adult life. Jeff Pharis used to worry that he might die there, and make the place look bad. If he does, I swear I'll turn him into an international anti-psychiatry martyr. Some day we'll have to put up a statue of him on the site of a closed-down IDHS plantation or some former departmental office building, and we'll hold ceremonies commemorating his sacrifice on Dunlap Day and Bye-bye Jeffrey Day.

Anybody who wants to say I'm crazy can only hope to be justified by James Baker's conditional release before June, 2025.