Correctional facilities are not just a place for punishment anymore. They have now turned into a place where the mentally ill are sent to. In the early years of the United States, mentally ill persons were automatically placed into prisons and jails. Around the 1820s and before 1970, this was considered inhumane, therefore more mentally ill were being placed into hospitals instead. However, since the 1970s, we have somewhat returned to this early concept of incarcerating them. Beginning in the 1960s, mental institutions began to shut down all around the country. This is referred to as deinstitutionalization. The results of deinstitutionalization were seen almost immediately. There was a sharp increase in the number of newly incarcerated …show more content…
Compared to only 35,000 patients in state psychiatric facilities, it is quite obvious that there is a problem here. Fifty years ago, these numbers would have outraged citizens and cause them to call for reform. Nowadays, however, the public barely bats an eyelash because this has become so commonplace. Now, you may be asking, “what is the big deal?”. Well, there are many problems associated with keeping the mentally ill in prisons and jails. One problem is that they tend to get much worse in prisons. Many refuse to be medicated and therefore cannot improve their conditions. They also tend to commit suicide more often than regular inmates. As much as 75 percent of all inmate suicides are committed by someone who has a history of mental illness. There are some reasons for these problems. Because the mentally ill are seen as so different, and usually act different, they tend to be beaten abused and/or raped more than other inmates. Approximately 8 percent of mentally ill inmates reported being raped by a fellow inmate during a six month period, compared to only 3 percent of inmates without mental illness. Another reason for inmates getting worse is that they are often placed into solitary confinement. This can happen because they’re disruptive, for their own protection, or simply because there isn’t much else officials can do for them. The lack of human contact and stimulation often leads to the worsening of psychotic
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
Today, prisons are the nation’s primary providers of mental health care, and some do a better job than others. Pete Earley focuses his research on the justice system in Miami, Florida. He documents how the city’s largest prison has only one goal for their mentally ill prisoners: that they do not kill themselves. The prison has no specialized
The fight for improved health care for those with mental illness has been an ongoing and important struggle for advocates in the United States who are aware of the difficulties faced by the mentally ill and those who take care of them. People unfortunate enough to be inflicted with the burden of having a severe mental illness experience dramatic changes in their behavior and go through psychotic episodes severe enough to the point where they are a burden to not only themselves but also to people in their society. Mental institutions are equipped to provide specialized treatment and rehabilitative services to severely mentally ill patients, with the help of these institutions the mentally ill are able to get the care needed for them to control their illness and be rehabilitated to the point where they can become a functional part of our society. Deinstitutionalization has led to the closing down and reduction of mental institutions, which means the thousands of patients who relied on these mental institutions have now been thrown out into society on their own without any support system to help them treat their mental illness. Years after the beginning of deinstitutionalization and after observing the numerous effects of deinstitutionalization it has become very obvious as to why our nation needs to be re-institutionalized.
In the 1800’s people with mental illnesses were frowned upon and weren't treated like human beings. Mental illnesses were claimed to be “demonic possessions” people with mental illnesses were thrown into jail cells, chained to their beds,used for entertainment and even killed. Some were even slaves, they were starved and forced to work in cold or extremely hot weather with chains on their feet. Until 1851, the first state mental hospital was built and there was only one physician on staff responsible for the medical, moral and physical treatment of each inmate. Who had said "Violent hands shall never be laid on a patient, under any provocation.
Jails as Mental Hospitals. A joint report of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and
Most of the idea of deinstitutionalized movement was because of the patient’s rights. Being out of the institutions gave the individuals more freedom, they didn’t always see the same four walls or the same people every day. In 2005 many severely mental ill individuals did not receive any psychiatric treatment. About half of the many that are severely mentally ill were homeless.
Until the middle of the last century, public mental health in the United States had been the responsibility, for the most part, of individual states, who chose to deal with their most profoundly mentally-ill by housing them safely and with almost total asylum in large state mental hospitals. Free of the stresses we all face in our lives, the mentally-ill faced much better prospects for peaceful lives and even recovery than they would in their conditions in ordinary society. In the hospitals, doctors were always accessible for help, patients were assured food and care, and they could be monitored to insure they never became a danger to themselves or others. Our nation’s state hospital system was a stable, efficient way to help improve the lives of our mentally disabled.
illnesses. It is estimated that about 50 percent of prison population suffers from some sort of mental illness. The most common mental illnesses that mostly make up this population are anxiety, antisocial personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder.
When an inmate has a current mental illness, prior to entering the prison, and it goes undiagnosed and untreated, the illness can just worsen and aggravate. Mental illness can be described in a variety of ways. Solitary confinement does not help prisoners in the long run. Solitary confinement actually has the potential to cause inmates to lose their ability to control and manage their anger.
Some of the issues with incarcerating mentally ill patients for long periods of time include: jail/prison overcrowding that results from mentally ill inmates remaining behind bars longer than other prisoners, behavioral problems that are disturbing to other prisoners and correctional staff, physical attacks on correctional staff and other prisoners, deterioration in the psychiatric condition of inmates with mental illness as they go without the treatment, solitary confinement, which worsens symptoms of mental illness. (Cite Source 1 here) NOT Plagirised
Prior to taking this course, I generally believed that people were rightly in prison due to their actions. Now, I have become aware of the discrepancies and flaws within the Criminal Justice system. One of the biggest discrepancies aside from the imprisonment rate between black and white men, is mental illness. Something I wished we covered more in class. The conversation about mental illness is one that we are just recently beginning to have. For quite a while, mental illness was not something people talked about publicly. This conversation has a shorter history in American prisons. Throughout the semester I have read articles regarding the Criminal Justice system and mental illness in the United States. Below I will attempt to describe how the Criminal Justice system fails when they are encountered by people with mental illnesses.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will explore the increasing incarceration rate of the mentally ill in the jails and prisons of the United States, the lack of medical services available to the mentally ill, the roles of the police, the correctional officers and the community and the revolving door phenomenon (Soderstrom, 2007). It will also review some of the existing and present policies that have been ineffective and present new policies that can be effective with the proper resources and training. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that the criminalization of the mentally ill has become a public health problem and that our policy should focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Those with mental illness would live in the community with an array of services and be able to be free from the constraints of confinement. In the early 1960’s the United States began an initiative to reduce and close publicly-operated mental hospitals. This became known as deinstitutionalization. The goal of deinstitutionalization was to allow people suffering from mental illness to live more independently in the community with treatments provided through community health programs. Unfortunately, the federal government did not provide sufficient ongoing funding for the programs to meet the growing demand. States reduced their budgets for mental hospitals but failed to increase funding for on-going community-based mental health programs. As a result of deinstitutionalization hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people were released into the community without the proper resources they needed for their treatment. (Harcourt,
States obtain many services that fall under mental health care, and that treat the mentally ill population. These range from acute and long-term hospital treatment, to supportive housing. Other effective services utilized include crisis intervention teams, case management, Assertive Community Treatment programs, clinic services, and access to psychiatric medications (Honberg at al. 6). These services support the growing population of people living in the...
for youngsters who have a long history of convictions for less serious felonies for which the juvenile court disposition has not been effective” (qtd. in Katel).