At approximately 9:30 this morning, Mister Smithers stumbled out the front door of the prison...
In the five or six years that I have known him, Smithers always walked and talked as if he were intoxicated. Because he was born with a crooked spine, Smithers is unable to stand fully erect. Neither can he walk in a straight line. Instead, he moves with a zigzag pattern. Whenever I'd see him traveling the corridors, he would sway from side-to-side, while those walking in the opposite direction would give their best effort to step aside to avoid getting bumped. In addition, due to his defective spine, Smithers' head has a noticeable tilt to the right. It's as if he has to constantly fight the forces of gravity that are trying to pull his head to the ground.
Naturally uncoordinated plus being zonked out from an array of psychotropic medications he is required to take to help control his behaviors and to keep him calm and sedated, Mister Smithers was now leaving Sullivan Correctional Facility with a destination to his home in Buffalo, New York, an almost all day drive by bus.
Prior to his incarceration, Mister Smithers had been a long-term patient at a psychiatric hospital in the city of Rochester. Normally, Smithers would've been paroled back to the hospital. This time, however, for reasons unknown - they would not take him back. So it was decided that Mister Smithers would live with his elderly mother and spinster sister in the home of his youth.
Illiterate and uneducated, unskilled in any kind of trade and diagnosed since his early 20s as "Schizophrenic, paranoid type," the prognosis for my friend is not good. How sad. But not much can be done for Mister Smithers. His time in prison has come to an end. He has completed the sentence he had received for assault and attempted robbery. Smithers, who was himself intoxicated at the time, tried to rob another drunk as he walked down the street. This happened while Mister Smithers was on a weekend pass from the hospital.
I enjoyed my many talks with him. During his ten years of confinement, a handful of which were spent here at Sullivan, Mister Smithers had to be housed in different Intermediate Care Program units. A chain-smoker with only a few crooked, yellow and burned from years of smoking hand-rolled cigarettes down to the last possible puff.
Poor guy. I've already told Mister Smithers again and again that when he gets out, to head to the nearest Christian rescue mission, or to seek out a simple storefront church for help, prayers and companionship. In such places he will get a meal or a warm cup of coffee. And to avoid churches with well-manicured lawns and pastors who wear fancy suits because it's doubtful he would get any help or even so much as a welcome. It will be the rescue missions and poor churches that will provide the help he needs. As these places specialize in caring for those who are down and out and the spiritually broken, which is all that Mister Smithers is. God is his only help.
D.B.
Smithers is not his real name.
Naturally uncoordinated plus being zonked out from an array of psychotropic medications he is required to take to help control his behaviors and to keep him calm and sedated, Mister Smithers was now leaving Sullivan Correctional Facility with a destination to his home in Buffalo, New York, an almost all day drive by bus.
Prior to his incarceration, Mister Smithers had been a long-term patient at a psychiatric hospital in the city of Rochester. Normally, Smithers would've been paroled back to the hospital. This time, however, for reasons unknown - they would not take him back. So it was decided that Mister Smithers would live with his elderly mother and spinster sister in the home of his youth.
Illiterate and uneducated, unskilled in any kind of trade and diagnosed since his early 20s as "Schizophrenic, paranoid type," the prognosis for my friend is not good. How sad. But not much can be done for Mister Smithers. His time in prison has come to an end. He has completed the sentence he had received for assault and attempted robbery. Smithers, who was himself intoxicated at the time, tried to rob another drunk as he walked down the street. This happened while Mister Smithers was on a weekend pass from the hospital.
I enjoyed my many talks with him. During his ten years of confinement, a handful of which were spent here at Sullivan, Mister Smithers had to be housed in different Intermediate Care Program units. A chain-smoker with only a few crooked, yellow and burned from years of smoking hand-rolled cigarettes down to the last possible puff.
Poor guy. I've already told Mister Smithers again and again that when he gets out, to head to the nearest Christian rescue mission, or to seek out a simple storefront church for help, prayers and companionship. In such places he will get a meal or a warm cup of coffee. And to avoid churches with well-manicured lawns and pastors who wear fancy suits because it's doubtful he would get any help or even so much as a welcome. It will be the rescue missions and poor churches that will provide the help he needs. As these places specialize in caring for those who are down and out and the spiritually broken, which is all that Mister Smithers is. God is his only help.
D.B.
Smithers is not his real name.
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