BUILDING A BRIDGE BETWEEN MENTAL ILLNESS AND THE CORRECTIONS SYSTEM

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“We had to pepper spray a guy. He was yelling and out of control. We grabbed the hose later to wash the pepper spray off of him and he resisted, saying that the water was burning him. I knew he had some sort of mental illness, but we kept going.”
Pete*, age 34, guard at the Weld County Jail
*Name changed for privacy
Fifteen percent of the jail, state and federal prisons have something in common, something we might not be so keen to talk about. Fifteen per cent of this population suffers from a mental illness. This is in contrast to the fifty per cent of the general population that will have a diagnosable mental illness at some point in their lives. After the millions of dollars that have flowed into psychiatric care at prison and jail settings, offenders who have psychological and substance abuse issues, which often overlap, are incarcerate without exposure to treatment. These ex-prisoners are later released into a community that has nothing to offer them: no employment, no treatment, no housing. This has led to drifting, homelessness, a new wave of mental decline and the chronic recidivism that we see today.
PEOPLE GO WHERE THE MONEY IS: TO JAIL/PRISION
To date, U.S. prisons house more mentally ill inmates than state hospitals. A recent report by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriff’s Association indicated that “44 states and the District of Columbia have at least one jail that holds more people coping with a mental illness than the largest state psychiatric hospital in the US does” (Russia Today, 2014). With that in mind, it is no surprise that the country is trying to solve its mental health issues in the jails and prisons. The country agrees. Two well respected newspapers, Minnesota’s Star Tribune and Te...

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...the offender would be able to return to court at which time the judge could exert the authority to expunge the individual’s record, dismiss the charges against them or rule in judgment against the defendant. Another step in the right direction would be to incorporate mental health courts for those, especially, who are charged with misdemeanors and non-violent offenses. In this way, the courts would be able to hand down a fair and just ruling.
CONCLUSION
Even with all the progress, without the help of mental health centers , the cost of housing, training, providing services for the mentally ill will eventually be an overwhelming burden on the correctional justice system if we don’t start providing better services for them. It is economically anomaly why we have waited this long, and for the sake of helping those who need it so dearly, I hope it’s not much longer.

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