What do you think would happen if psychiatric hospitals released thousands of mentally ill patients from their facilities? You don’t even have to think about it because history has already provided us the answer. Until the 1970s, public psychiatric hospitals were responsible for treating and housing mentally ill citizens. As a result of the deinstitutionalization movement, a national campaign that urged state governments to shut down mental health facilities, people with serious mental issues ended up on the streets, abusing drugs, alcohol and getting involved in crimes--becoming a supposed threat to public safety and therefore being massively incarcerated. In other words, prisons and jails became the new de facto mental health asylums. The logic behind shutting down mental asylums throughout the country was replacing these institutions with more inclusive and more community-oriented psychiatric hospitals. But this never happened. Placing mentally ill offenders who committed minor crimes in jails and prisons that are unable to meet their special needs is a direct violation of their right to be treated. But most importantly, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and their massive allocation among prisons and jails has not only worsened their …show more content…
However, the problem is that many of the mentally ill who end up in prison or jail are not always a menace to society; oftentimes they are minor offenders who, because of the almost nonexistent mental health system, have no other option than the incarceration system. Many of them are good candidates for rehab, but being incarcerated and often put in solitary confinement, worsens their mental health, taking away any chance of becoming functional members of society—which, utopian or not, should be the