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Mental Illness In Prison Analysis

516 Words3 Pages

One prisoner that we saw during the lecture told the interviewer that he once he got out on parole, he was going to commit a crime in order to get back into prison. He knew that he would not be able to keep up treatment for his mental illness outside of the system as he did not have support outside of prison. I do not blame him. This sort of situation could easily have been avoided. His threat to commit another crime and his general wishes should have been taken into consideration when he came up for consideration for parole. This particular situation was a great failure on the part of the prison and the parole system itself. Before the lecture, I had no idea that the prisons in Alabama were so bad. Although I generally didn’t believe the people who insist that some prisons are resort-like, I was under the assumption that they weren’t unpleasant to the point of infringing on the prisoner’s rights. What surprised me the most was the description of the filth that is allowed to accumulate in the prisons in Alabama. It seems like common sense that allowing human beings to live in these horrible conditions promote illness. Before reading the articles, I assumed that the practice of …show more content…

The goal for all prisoners is punishment and release. However, this punishment should never be cruel. The current lack of mental health care for the increasing number of mentally ill patients is cruel. Even worse, these problems could be fixed. If there was an increase in funding for trained correctional officers and proper mental health care givers, there would be a great increase in quality of life for the mentally ill in prisons. A general lack of funds on the state level prevents this from happening, so it is likely that the criminal justice system will continue to fail to properly care for these

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483 Words | 2 Pages

Level one can have two visitors a month, call once a month, have access to GED training and the prison canteen, and are eligible for financial compensation. Justice Stevens argues the distinctions between the two levels, regardless of the newspaper and magazines (he omitted pictures because they are restricted in level one as well), offer enough incentive. Therefore, he rendered the prison officials “objective” for depriving inmate access to newspapers to produce an incentive for improved behavior as virtually worthless (to the inmate), and questionable. Justice Stevens held another argument against the “penological interest’; the fact that such a policy is absent from other high security prisons, and the “safety threat” newspapers, pictures, and magazines present are just as plausible by their other belongings; clothes, writing paper, a plate, and other materials. He also stresses the scary nature of the deprivation theory of rehabilitation; which would allow the government to assume an inmate’s rationale, or what he calls “state-sponsored effort at mind-control,” by justifying the denial of their rights in the assumption (or hope) it would produce positive behavioral change.

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502 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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125 Words | 1 Pages

People often are guilty of letting things that are out of sight be out of their mind, but human rights should not be something overlooked. The imprisoned mentally ill has been often overlooked and there voices are not heard as they struggle everyday in inhumane conditions. The eight amendment states that no cruel and unusual punishments is to be inflicted upon the prisoners. Is the United Sates prison systems treating mentally ill prisoners according to the eight amendment? The largest prison rates belong to the United states and of those imprisoned, around the world, they are ten times more likely to be suffering from a mental illness (Mills, 2007).

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916 Words | 4 Pages

I learned not only the reasons that these inmates are violent but also why they are violent and that this trait is a result of attitudes and subcultures that value and support violence outside of the prisons and inside of them. Also that people who are not particularly violent when they enter prisons are almost forced to become violent in order to protect themselves from inmates who already are violent in nature. The article makes it seem like it would be very hard to be a nonviolent inmate because you would become more of a victim to violence and possible sexual violence because you do not defend yourself. I also learned that these inmates are encouraged and told that violence is the solution to others being violent by their correctional guards.

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602 Words | 3 Pages

The major problem we have today is that prisons shouldn't deal with taking care of the mentally ill, that's the mental hospital facilities job. The people that work in this type of setting need to be patient with the mentally ill. Its not easy to deal with people that are mentally ill, they require so much attention. Putting mentally ill people in a prison is the worst thing to do, it makes their mental illness worse due to being in isolation.

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766 Words | 4 Pages

On the contrary, they continue to misbehave as the way that had them chained up. Rehabilitating from crime is similar to recovering from drug abuse, the most effective way to cut off from further engagement is to keep anything related out of reach. Yet, the prison has done the opposite, no prisoner can reform under such circumstance. Prison is supposed to put an end to criminal activities but it turns out to be the extension; crime keeps happening in and out of the prison and criminals stay as

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475 Words | 2 Pages

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.

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984 Words | 4 Pages

He says that the inmates should be treated like patients rather than inmates. And also while in cook county jail the inmate receive the help that they need. He says he problem is when a mentally ill person gets releases without their meds and treatment and support the usually end up back in jail and this becomes a repeated cycle. Ironically by Illinois cutting their mental health funding it only costed them more money. The state saw a 131 million dollar increase in spending for mental health.

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1642 Words | 7 Pages

The creation of prisons were established around the time of the emancipation of slavery. The black community were released from the horrific life they faced when living in slavery, but slavery was not over. Once the African American’s were free society configured a plan that would put an end to the freedom of slaves. The creation of prisons, allowed society the ability to enact a formal genocide of black people by placing them in cages. The roles of prisons over time as established locations that conduct inhuman treatment of Americans, primarily those who are colored, immigrants and other communities labeled as inferior to whites.

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679 Words | 3 Pages

Thesis: It is very important for the sake of Americans tax dollars that we change the way that prisons are run and increase the productivity of inmates so when they are released from jail they are ready to be a productive member in society and have the confidence to achieve new goals. Introduction: Day after day, millions of inmates sit in jail doing nothing productive with their lives. We are paying to house inmates that may not even have a good reason to be there. For example, drug offenders are being kept with murderers and other violent offenders.

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332 Words | 2 Pages

Mentally ill prisoners in prison should be well taken care of. These offender need more care than those without a mental illness due to the illness they have they could hurting innocents civilian and guards or other prisoners like themselves or even themselves. Mentally ill offender need more medicines, Improve conditions, and the cost to keep them. Medicines Mentally ill offenders need as much more medicine than inmates without a mental illness,

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1030 Words | 5 Pages

Conditions in these institutions were really bad and they were also unproductive. This led to outrage in the late 19th Century which sparked the “reformatory” movement. This was a period when the prison’s role in society began to be restructured. The goal was to redefine the prison’s role as that of “reforming” inmates into model citizens that can rejoin normal society as functioning, productive people. In order to achieve this goal prison systems began providing inmates with education, work, and counseling.

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813 Words | 4 Pages

What can be done The monitoring, prevention and treatment of mental disorders, as well as the promotion of good mental health, are part of the public health goals in prisons. According to World Health Organization (2017), even in resource-limited countries, measures can be taken to improve the mental health of prisoners and prison staffs, which can be adapted to the country’s cultural, social, political and economic environment (WHO, 2017). In the British prisons, some practices and policies have also been implemented, which reflect the positive impacts of prisoners’ mental health and wellbeing. Provide prisoners with appropriate mental health treatment and care.

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1496 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout history minimal improvements have been made to various flawed segments of the correctional system. However, there are continuing incidents where prisoners are losing their lives due to policies that are not regulated. As a result, even with tremendous strides to better the conditions of prison systems there are still missing segments that must be addressed. Mental health has proven to be a continual factor for prisoners, however the issue regarding it has remained hidden, almost as a means to detract attention away from the intuition. As a result, procedures regarding mental health training need to be implemented in the training for staff as well as the regulation of

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1567 Words | 7 Pages

For the Application of the Criminal Justice System project of the Criminal Justice course, I chose the arrest of John Burke. This case is about the arrest and sentencing of John Burke who had shot and killed Joseph Ronan. Twenty-five year old John Burke agreed to meet with 22 year old Joseph Ronan at Ronans home, in Reading, Massachusetts on Monday, August 15, 2011 around 1pm, with the intent of purchasing Percocet pills. (Boston.com, 2013) However, shortly after entering Ronans home, Burke opened fire (News, 2011), and after shooting Joseph Ronan several times, with the belief that Ronan was involved in a robbery at Burkes apartment in April 2011 (Boston.com, 2013), fled the home.

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