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Mentally Ill In The Criminal Justice System Essay

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Mentally Ill in the Criminal Justice System The warehousing of mentally ill patients with in the justice system has recently began to receive a great deal of attention from concerned media centers and citizens of the aforementioned justice system. As many people know, there are a variety of different types of personalities within any penitentiary or prison. The warehousing of mentally ill patients just contributes to the list more. It has become more inhumane to house the mentally ill patients throughout the criminal justice system due to solitary confinement (Reutter). The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) has recently been documented on how they “house” their prisoners that suffer from a severe mental illness. According to the …show more content…

Certain federal government organizations such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and Medicare and Medicaid coverage have spent a total of 111.4 trillion dollars in support of the mental health programs with in the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and at most, 386 billion dollars on block grants with in each of the 50 states. Among the annual funds that are put into the justice system for mental health care plans, the more serious discussion is among the manifest of not having enough “community based” health care facilities for the mentally ill. “These people don’t think there’s anything wrong with them and these are disproportionately the ones who end up committing felonies or misdemeanors, ending up in jail or prison or even ending up homeless” – E. Fuller Torrey. According to a survey that was published by the US and District of Columbia, forty four out of the fifty states had been housing double the number of mentally ill patients than the state’s largest remaining psychiatric hospital. Although there were exceptions, only six states made the list: Kansas, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington State, and Wyoming (The Fiscal

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In addition to, some Consumers are not aware of their illness. Never-the-less, in the State of New Jersey people who are deemed as a danger to themselves or others due to a mental illness is involuntarily committed to this facility by a judge who has written the orders. At “Greystone Parks Psychiatric Hospital” there are certain protocols that must be followed before people are admitted into this facility. The protocol is as follows, patients stay in either the A1/B1 units.

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In the article, Unwinding Mass Incarceration by Stefan Lobuglio and Anne Piehl, they argue that unwinding the mass incarceration “well neither be cheap nor easy, and to be done responsibly will require a new infrastructure of coordinated community-based facilities and services that can meet evidence-based incarceration needs while also ensuring public safety.” Hence, their argument is clean-cut with evidence in the article to back up their argument of unwinding the mass incarceration. Similarly, a solid fill of a concluding statement upon the unwinding of the mass incarceration as stated in the article, “requires much more than stopping current practices or reversing course by mass commutations and early release programs.” Subsequently, from this article, there are numerous interesting key points, and perspective of unwinding the mass incarceration.

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Under article 8 of the Bill of Human Rights it states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (The Eighth Amendment).” Placing a mentally ill inmate inside four walls away from any social interaction and medical attention is in fact cruel. As said by a federal judge, putting a mentally ill person in segregation is the “equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe (Wallace 11).” A mentally ill person needs help, not a poor environment in which they won’t get any better. Not only does solitary confinement mess with the mind, but it inflicts inmates to self-harm in any way possible.

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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.

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“My work with the poor and incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” (Stevenson 18) The wrongful convictions of people with mental health issues in the justice system are widely discussed in the book ‘Just Mercy’. In the chapter ‘Mitigation’, Stevenson’s focal point is on the mistreatment and injustices that mentally ill people endure while in the system. This chapter in particular opened my eyes to the struggle these people face, ways we can help to prevent it, and how I have started seeing it in my everyday life.

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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

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Web. 15 Oct. 2015. Recently, the issue of treating mentally ill inmates while they serve time for the crimes they committed has become a very prevalent topic (Glazer n.pag.). Because budget cuts have caused many mental health institutions to shut down, court and law officials have been led to place these mentally ill offenders in jails that do not have the equipment and staff necessary to help treat them (Glazer n.pag.). Instead, the mentally ill offenders are simply placed in solitary confinement, causing their condition or illness to worsen over time (Glazer n.pag.).

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Also, the correctional facilities help inmates with mental illness

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Mentally ill individuals are present in jails and prisons at disproportionate rates. The problem will not be significantly improved by programs alone. To fix the problem: the reach of standard mental health needs to be expanded, the mentally ill need to be diverted early in the criminal justice process. Criminal justice professionals need to have better training in dealing with and recognizing mental illness, data needs to be used more effectively, and aftercare programs for the mentally ill need to be in place for them when they are released from jail or prison. It is for these reasons that there is a disconnect between legal concepts of insanity and psychological concepts of mental illness.

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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.

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The 2010 One Year Longitudinal Study of the Psychological Effects of Administrative Segregation conducted by a group of scientists concluded, “Although there were statistically significant findings, the results did not support the hypotheses of the study. We expected that there would be a worsening over time in reported behavior/sensations and that this change would be worse for inmates with mental illness in AS. However, we found that when significant changes over time occurred, they tended to be in the direction of improvement and this improvement tended to occur more frequently for inmates with mental illness,” (. O’Keefe, page 150). This study was conducted in Colorado. Although Colorado is known for having a few supermax prisons, their prisons are not as inforcing about contact with the outside during confinement as our very own Washington.

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It is never someone's fault that they are mentally ill, and yet today's society makes these human beings feel like pariahs. This social stigma is just one of the many factors that contribute to America's broken mental health system. Those suffering from a mental illness in the United States are faced with few options in terms of getting diagnosed and seeking treatment. Our government has exercised the absolute minimum of their powers towards addressing this issue. Studies have shown that 1 in 6 American adults are currently living with a mental illness, and

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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.

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