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. Many psychiatric hospitals have closed down, which the only option left for the mentally ill was to be taken in jails and prisons. In the documentary we learn …show more content…
The mental health care system in Ohio is one of the most effective in the country. Ohio spent a lot of time and years making improvements in their systems. Separating the mentally ill and the prison general population by putting in mental health units to . Every morning the mental health staff get together to discuss inmates that are in danger to themselves, and talk about keeping a closer eye on them and come up with a solution to help them. They took action to their disciplinary process after seeing that many of them were going into maximum security prisons. 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. Mentally ill inmates cause lots of problems, they yell constantly, they