A Turbulent Mind, and a Crime That Shocked New York
Measures to keep the violently mentally ill from hurting others are about to be put to the test by the man they were designed to stop
By John J. Lennon and Bill Keller
I.
On a recent morning, Andrew Goldstein emerged from his cell in D Gallery, waddling on the balls of his feet, clutching the banister as he made his way down four flights with a few dozen other men categorized as SMI-V — “seriously mentally ill, violent.” Escorted by a correction officer and a few of us prisoners from the general population assigned as facilitators, the men passed through a metal detector, along a canopied path — some bobbing for discarded cigarette butts — into a factory-style building, and up three flights to a floor of bright-white rooms. We would spend most of the morning and afternoon there in a computer lab doing cognitive programs or participating in group sessions: managing psychosis, life skills, recovery and reintegration, preparing to navigate the challenges of prison and, eventually, New York.
It’s not easy being an overweight, balding, Jewish schizophrenic living among the SMI-Vs of the New York prison system. During his 19 years, 16 of them in the state’s flagship prison mental ward at the…
