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The Pros And Cons Of Mentally Ill Offenders

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One may believe that being a criminal is horrible due to the stigma attached to them. However, image being a mentally ill offender, you not only have the stigmatization of being a criminal, but also have a label of having a mental disorder as well. Both of these factors have a significant burden on offenders when it comes to finding employment, which sometimes can be a condition of their probation or parole requirements. According to Lindstedt et al. (2005), almost fifty percent of the subjects in their research reported being unemployed. This is an astounding number of individuals who cannot provide for themselves. By not having steady employment, mentally ill offenders run into a myriad of other issues. It is as if this obstacle bleeds into so many more such as housing, counseling, prescriptions, transportations, medical, etc. According to Scott (2008), a contributing factor to increased criminal activity among mentally ill offenders is their lack of education, which in turn leads to their lack of employment. They cannot find decent employment without an education, which is a cycle that contributes to criminality. …show more content…

Due to living in poverty, viable housing options are especially difficult to come by. Therefore, we see a vast quantity of mentally ill offenders living in disadvantaged neighborhoods or even homeless. Scott (2008) mentions that by living in these neighborhoods that are socially disadvantaged and inept, this does in fact increase the risk of violence, which can create a challenge in desisting from crime for mentally ill offenders. These offenders do not have a safe place to go home to, so having a mental illness, especially a severe disorder, can certainly place significant strain on the offender by not having adequate

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1655 Words | 7 Pages

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.

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A major issue is with our justice system is either ignoring or don’t recognize convicts with mental health issues, which leads to lengthier convictions and higher rates of recidivism. Ignoring or not recognizing the convict’s mental health issues just gets them incarcerated for a longer time and they never receive the right treatment to get better. Due to our country’s prison not having the right or proper treatment for the mentally ill will make it harder for them to adjust when the release back into society. One of the main reasons why our prisons don’t have the correct treatment centers for the mentally ill is because it just not affordable to have non-prison facilities on the prison campus. One solution that has been tried is to create a “supermax” prison, which is facility that known for segregation, lockdown, or solitary confinement.

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670 Words | 3 Pages

et al. describes how deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has unintentionally increased the number of individuals with mental illness that are incarcerated. They argue that interactions between police and the mentally ill have grown as mental health service facilities have been closed. The patients of these closed facilities have been sent out into society without suitable support. They

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602 Words | 3 Pages

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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1051 Words | 5 Pages

The Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004: Problems and Prospects by Christine M. Litschgea and Michael G. Vaughn, is a research article whose focus is three-fold. First, the researchers review the literature available on the elements that have contributed to the increasing levels of incarcerated persons with severe mental illness (SMI). Secondly, they analyze the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 (MIOTCRA), and assess if this law can reduce problems associated with incarcerated persons with SMI.

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1266 Words | 6 Pages

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.

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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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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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Laci states that in state prisons from 1997 to 2000, “191,000 prisoners described themselves as mentally ill- 16 percent of the population” (Prisons and Jails: A Deterrent to Crime?). It is crucial that people with mental health issues be treated in order to achieve a state of peace. However, they are thrown in prison where they can be extremely ill-treated many times. One cannot expect the poor prison conditions and the misunderstanding guards to give them the special treatment that will keep them from reoffending. It is too often that prisoners are either arrested with a mental condition or develop it in prison because of the circumstances in which they are put.

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525 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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984 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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1675 Words | 7 Pages

About 29 percent of the mentally ill incarcerated in 1992 were held with no charges against them. They were waiting for a bed at a hospital, psychiatric evaluation or transportation to some kind of psychiatric hospital. The mentally ill do not have adequate access to mental health services in jails; about 1 in 5. A lot of the mentally ill are arrested for misdemeanors. The mentally ill are also incarcerated for less serious charges than those who do not have a mental illness.

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716 Words | 3 Pages

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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332 Words | 2 Pages

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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947 Words | 4 Pages

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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