Giving Compass' Take:

• This essay from The Marshall Project offers an intimate glimpse of how mental health issues are treated in prison — the reality is grim, with many inmates left to suffer and empathy in short supply.

• How can policymakers and advocates help implement criminal justice reform that takes a more humane approach to mental illness, one that doesn't default to punitive measures?

• Here's how North Dakota is embracing more compassionate prison reform.

It was just a small cut, I thought. Self-harm, yes, but not self-destruction.

Yet 21 stitches later I’m sitting on a metal bed in a 9-by-12 cell on Mountain View Unit’s Crisis Management Center — a.k.a. “the psych center” or “the icebox” — left with nothing but my thoughts. No clothes, no books, no hygiene products, not even a pair of panties to hold the pad between my legs.

They’re afraid I’ll choke myself with my underwear. This is the protocol for suicidal inmates.

“But I told you I don’t want to die!” I scream to no one in sight, desperate to hear something other than a cacophony of my own thoughts.

I thought I was just trying to relieve a little stress. But that didn’t stop them from putting me on suicide watch for three days.

Every female offender who comes here for “observation,” no matter how timid, is treated the same: humiliated, dehumanized, and with extreme caution.

“Well I do want to die!” a voice from the cell next-door to mine screams. “Why did they cut me down?!”

I look out my cell door and see that another psych patient-inmate has flooded her cell. Toilet water is running underneath her metal door and into the hallway.

That must be why they only give us four squares of toilet paper at a time ...

This isn’t a place that provides treatment, help, or even empathy to those who suffer from stress, depression, and mental illness. Instead, it punishes you for it, by putting you in the most torturous and humiliating circumstances possible — making me more, not less, likely to turn to cutting.

Read the full article about what it's like to be a cutter in prison by Deidre McDonald at The Marshall Project.