Manifestly Dangerous

About the Book

“Manifestly Dangerous: True portraits from a maximum security forensic mental health facility and veteran hospitals” This creative non-fiction work presents the procedural, practical, and esoteric elements associated with managing aggressive behaviors in a maximum security forensic MH facility while complying with mandates to eliminate shackles and minimize the use of seclusion and restraints. Assigned to determine the “competency” of those violent inmates charged with felonies who are unable to proceed through Florida’s legal system, the 220 bed facility evaluated and treated a revolving population of 500 inmates who generated 485 assaults and 1 to 2 deaths per year – only discharging back to jails, courts or civil hospital those who were considered no longer “manifestly dangerous”. There is one “tongue-in-cheek” piece the author won’t insult your intelligence by identifying as well as two that are auto-biographical.

About the Author

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Dan Dewey is a service connected disabled Vietnam veteran whose formative years were fashioned growing up in New York State’s 1st Protestant orphanage and finally forged with years of bomb recovery at the El Uotia Bomb Range, northern Sahara desert, and the Republic of Vietnam – taking a break from experiential truths to pursue a formal education in literature and eventual Masters degree in Information Science. Following 25 years heating with wood in the Blue Ridge Mountains on a dirt road at “the end of the power line”, home schooling his 3 children, and pursuing art in many mediums, Dan moved back to a Homogenized America to work with Florida’s most violent prisoners which honed a sense of gallows humor that permeates his creative non-fiction writing. He now lives on a 31’ 7 ton one-off sloop primarily docked in Anclote Isles, FL as far away from adult life as he can get.