Willamette Week | News| Crime

Last summer, Peter Klarquist, the son of a local lawyer who grew up in Portland's West Hills, did something unimaginable.

On June 15, sitting in the Justice Center jail, the handsome 20-year-old gouged out one of his eyes.

"I think I clawed my eye out," Klarquist simply said when a shaken jailer found him that afternoon. At the time, Klarquist was waiting for authorities to clear up a paperwork glitch that should have allowed him to be transported to the state psychiatric hospital immediately.

He was rushed to Oregon Health Sciences University, where doctors tried to restore his vision. Two days later, while still in a psychotic state, Klarquist attempted the gruesome task again, this time on the other eye. He is now legally blind.

"He's got enough vision in his right eye that he can avoid bumping into large things in a well-lighted room," his father, Skip, said.

Klarquist's family recently served seven county and state authorities with notice that they intend to sue for negligence. Although at this point it's unclear to what extent these authorities are responsible for Klarquist's blindness, his story illustrates a social tragedy: the plight of hundreds of Oregonians with mental illnesses who are languishing behind bars, where they can't receive proper treatment.

"There is a growing and seemingly intractable problem with persons...already having a diagnosis of mental illness who are in jail," a 1997 Multnomah County report stated. In 1995, according to the report, 190 beds in the county jail (about 13 percent of the total) were taken up on any given day by people with serious mental illnesses. Over the last few years, the situation has only gotten worse. Klarquist's terrible story clearly illustrates the consequences.

Until he was 17, Peter Klarquist lived a relatively normal life. The middle of three brothers, he went to Lincoln High School, held a variety of part-time jobs and earned his Eagle Scout badge. Then, midway through high school, he was diagnosed with depression. Later, the diagnosis was changed to bipolar disorder (also called manic depression); still later, doctors determined that he had schizoaffective disorder, an illness that combines the mood swings of bipolar disorder with the psychosis of schizophrenia.

In October 1997, the devastating effects of that illness became clear to Klarquist's family. Driving his car north in the southbound lanes of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Klarquist plowed into five other cars waiting at the stoplight on East Burnside Street.

"He went across the intersection aiming his car at the people there," said John Colby, the deputy district attorney assigned to the case. Although no one was very seriously injured, Colby's theory was that Klarquist was trying to commit suicide. Klarquist was charged with 13 offenses, including second-degree assault, a crime that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of almost six years in prison.

On June 10, he plead guilty but used the insanity defense, agreeing to serve a 10-year sentence under the jurisdiction of the Psychiatric Security Review Board, which is in charge of the criminally insane. Like the approximately 70 others committed to the PSRB this year, Klarquist was supposed to be taken immediately to Oregon State Hospital for treatment. That didn't happen.

According to a county investigation, the state hospital wouldn't accept Klarquist because his paperwork wasn't properly filled out. While he was waiting for the bureaucratic mess to clear, he took out his eyes.

"My understanding was he was hearing voices and the voices told him to do that," Klarquist's father said.

Though many details remain unclear, Skip Klarquist knows this much: In jail Peter had stopped taking his medication--something mentally ill people often do whether they're free or incarcerated, according to Kathy Page, the nurse who runs the county jails' health services.

"[My wife] Linda and I could see him deteriorating," Skip Klarquist said. "She had called the jail several times to say he wasn't taking his medications."

Doctors and nurses in the jails--unlike those in hospitals--are prohibited by law to force inmates to take medications, even when their well-being depends on it.

"Our clients should not remain in jail any longer than they have to," says Mary Claire Buckley, executive director of the PSRB. "They're in need of hospitalization rather than incarceration."

Although Peter Klarquist's case is extreme in its violence, his situation is not unusual. According to Page, the number of mentally ill people booked into the county jail has increased 41 percent since 1992. The problem has grown to such an extent--and space is so limited--that the sheriff opened up an additional ward at Inverness Jail, where up to 60 mentally ill inmates are bunked in an open dorm at any given time.

According to Sheriff Dan Noelle, the state hospital has been too slow to accept new patients from the jail over the past few months, which has caused problems in the jail. "[Mentally ill people] tend to deteriorate because we can't force them to take medication," the sheriff said.

The problem, according to the state mental health department, is space. There were 345 mentally ill offenders in the state hospital as of Oct. 1, but the budgeted capacity is just 335 beds. The shortage of beds has caused a statewide backlog of mentally ill inmates waiting for hospitalization.

This shortage might have been expected. While Oregon has been busy building prisons and jails, the state has not added any new hospital beds for people with mental illnesses. In fact, over the last decade or so, the number of in-patient psychiatric beds across the state has decreased, and people with serious mental illnesses have been directed toward treatment in the community.

Late last month, state hospital officials asked for emergency approval to juggle its budget to reopen 30 beds by January. This marks the first time the state has increased capacity in about a decade, says Margaret Johnson, the deputy administrator of the state mental health division.

The decision won't help Klarquist at this point, but it does show the state is beginning to take another look at its priorities.

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Willamette Week | originally published December 2, 1998