Incarcerating people with mental disorder Prison is now America’s new home for mentally ill people. Perhaps, warehouses for the severely mentally people. Two million people who suffer from mental illness are being put behind bars. According to Dahlia Lithwick, “in 2012, approximately, 356,368 inmates with severe mental illness were in prisons and jails, while 35.000 patients severely ill were admitted in state psychiatric hospitals”. She further adds, “Ten times more mentally ill people are now in jails and prisons than in state psychiatric hospitals”. This reveals that, the enormous increased of the mentally ill person in the criminal justice is a crucial problem. Jailing people with mental illness is true because jails and prisons have …show more content…
Thoroughly, mentally people after being released have difficulties to access through the mental health services and supports because prison and jail don’t have the right access for these people and therefore, these programs will serve them to bond with the community and not feel left out. According to David C. Kondrat, William S. Rowe, and Melanie Sosinski “a major obstacle for inmates reentering the community is connecting with mental health services, with over 80 percent of inmates having difficulty accessing mental health treatment upon release ( Lamberti & Weisman, 2004 pg. 101)”. This illustrates that, mentally people after being released have difficult to access through the mental health services and supports. So literally, these programs will serve them to bond with the community and not feel left out. Consequently, the transition planning program also serves as a transition from prison to community which enhances on planning and preparation for inmates to feel at home. On the contrary, the FACT program is an adaptation of assertive community treatment as a way of addressing the negative impacts of deinstitutionalization on people with mental illness (Stein & Test,
Craig Haney’s article Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and “Supermax” Confinement illustrates the complications faced in solitary confinement emphasizing the rise in mental health challenges imposed. Particular attention is paid to the escalation in the nature of mental health-related issues, including the negative psychological effects of imprisonment. Haney discusses these increasingly widespread and specialized units that bring forward the issues presented taking into account the notion of isolation and the association of the high percentage of prisoners suffering from mental illnesses. The article briefly assesses the recent case law concerning the difficulty of mentally ill prisoners, suggesting that the majority of broader psychological problems have been overlooked by the courts.
As the influx of mentally ill prisoners increase in federal penitentiaries, and prison’s staffing level remaining the same, inhumane treatment and dehumanizing practices of prisons are becoming more common and inescapable. In his article, “One of the Darkest Periods in the History of American Prisons,” Andrew Cohen elucidates how federal prisons are negatively developing over the years. By primary referencing to investigations in California and Florida, and allegations in Mississippi and Louisiana, Cohen is able demonstrate how ill-equipped, and reckless prisons have become in response to the needs of prisoners with mental illness. He even goes so far to compare today’s jails to “medieval places of unspeakable cruelty” ( ). In “One of the Darkest Periods in the History of American Prisons,” Cohen appeals heavily on pathos to the convince the audience of the fundamental corruption and carelessness that beholds today’s prisons towards inmates, especially mentally ill inmates.
The video named, “The New Asylums,” is about people in prison who have mental illness. Many people who have mental illness are held in prison throughout the America instead of hospitals or facilities, and they are more tend to be homeless before arrested and put in to jail. According to video, there are some mental health treatment meetings in prison. However, some psychologists think that people who have mental illness in prison need hospitalization. Moreover, the video claims that inmates who has severe mentally illness cant follow the rules.
Offenders with these disorders could be dangerous to other or even themselves. The offenders with disorders like those stated before are close to being released back into society which must be frightening if they do not take their medicines. 2 Improve conditions Mental offenders are thrown in a correctional facilities due their crimes, but these offenders should be in a prison or a correctional facility where they do not get the help they need. When in a prison some of these offender could be and will be picked on like a schoolyard which might led to a suicide attempt. A report on mental offender in california have reported that over 30,000 prisoners confined in the state prison.
Thus, in order to deal with the enormous influx of mentally ill inmates, criminal justice policymakers and correctional facilities are beginning to shift their focus in priorities and policies to innovative, targeted solutions designed to immediately respond to the present concerns, and address both of the needs that appear on the “front-end” at the point of contact, as well as on the “back-end” with treatment and re-entry reforms. The following are examples of some of these reforms: I. Specialized Training and
Also receiving the treatment within the jail will allow them to continue to practice safe habits when released rather than behaving criminally and impulsively bringing them back to prison. The National Alliance on Mental Illness believes that prisoners with mental health deserve access to quality mental health treatment. They give statistics to prove that mental illnesses within jails are a big problem and later provide links to what they have already done to help mentally ill prisoners in jails not receiving the treatment they need. The author believes, “People with mental illness who are incarcerated deserve access to appropriate mental health treatment, including screening, regular and timely access to mental health providers, and access to medications and programs that support recovery”(“Treatment While Incarcerated”). To be able to involve all of these different types of treatments, prisons first need to be able to include educated staff.
Untreated mental illness is dangerous and over time we have learned that locking people with a mental illness is not the solution but makes it worse. People with untreated mental illness face many consequences. “People with untreated psychiatric illnesses comprise 250,000 people, of the total homeless population” (mentalillnesspolicy.org). The quality of life for these individuals is extremely heart breaking, and many are victimized regularly.
Today there are more mentally ill people in prisons and jails in the United States than any hospital or psych facility in this country. Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois is the largest mental health institution in the country. When a mentally ill person gets arrested for a violent crime they stay three to four times longer than a regular violent offender. “One third of those incarnated in cook county jail suffers from psychological disorders.” According to a 2006 Justice Department study, more than half of prisoners in the United States Suffer from some sort of mental health problem.
A major demographic of people that are being treated unfairly within the justice system are the mentally ill. Because of the modern lack of empathy within the system, those suffering from mental illness are not receiving the treatment and care that they need, which is limiting the justice that the system is producing. Mental illness is rarely considered when assessing crime, and this has led to large quantities of prisoners being mentally ill. In “Just Mercy”, Stevenson says, “America’s prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill” (Stevenson 186). Because courts have a lack of empathy regarding the mentally ill, these people are being piled up in prisons, making up the majority of the population.
Their are around 500,000 mentally ill people that are put away in prisons and jails. In the documentary “The New Asylums”,Ohio's state prison system reveals the issues that are ongoing with mentally ill inmates. The major problem we have today is that no one is taking care of the people of these people. Most mentally ill people live by themselves with no family or friends to take care of them and they are off their medications. The mentally ill come in to prison on non violent offenses such as disturbing the peace, trespassing, etc. After leaving mental hospitals they usually end up on the streets and become homeless.
There are so many mentally ill people in correctional facilities because most families do not know how to help their loves ones who suffer from a mental illness, so the call the police for help. Majority of the police officers do not know what to do or how to handle people with a mental illness disease. Police officers who are not trained to deal with the mentally ill often do not recognize that person is ill. Some police officers do not recognize if the individual should or not go to jail or a treatment center or medical facility. The impact of law enforcement and the judicial system dealing with people with a mental illness is to assist the inmates with the help they need.
Inmates with mental health issues are not getting the help they need in order to sustain a happy and non-illicit lifestyle. Those who are incarcerated need a healthy environment to learn from their mistakes and develop not just for their own benefit but to benefit us as a society. We also need to strive for better mental health treatments and support systems. One way we can help is to make this issue known and support organizations that work to change these harsh conditions and talk to a higher authority to suggest a change. Another way we can help is to volunteer at some of these jails or prisons and get involved to support and offer your help.
The shift is attributed to the unexpected clinical needs of this new outpatient population, the inability of community mental health centers to meet these needs, and the changes in mental health laws (Pollack & Feldman, 2003). Thousands of mentally ill people flowing in and out of the nation 's jails and prisons. In many cases, it has placed the mentally ill right back where they started locked up in facilities, but these jail and prison facilities are ill-equipped to properly treat and help them. In 2006 the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that there were; 705,600 mentally ill inmates in state prisons, 78,000 in federal prisons, and
Police are routinely cast into conditions in which they have to recognize and quickly adapt to situations involving mentally ill suspects. This may be the reason police officers are known as “streetcorner psychiatrists, de facto mental health service providers, or psychiatrist in blue.” Some studies report that ten percent of all police contacts are with people with a serious mental illness. Other studies report that people with a serious mental illness represent six to eight percent of all state prisoners, while other data claims that over half of state prisoners have a serious mental illness. Further, people with a serious mental illness will spend more time incarcerated than people who do not have a serious mental illness.
There are more people incarcerated who have a mental illness that there are in psychiatric hospitals. (Psychology Today). Mental Health America reports that “there are more than 1.2 million people currently residing in prisons and/or jails with a mental health condition and lack of access to mental health care”. (MHA). 40% of adults with a serious mental illness will be arrested at some point in their lifetime, usually for disturbing the peace or for a petty crime which are caused by their mental illness.