Lucky’s Dream, a novel by Butch Mandatta Ponzio, begins with a prologue which, at first, cast a veil of confusion. This veil was somewhat lifted as I read further and began to piece together the foreshadowing presented in the prologue. Once I finished reading Part One: Waiting, I went back and reread the prologue, which cleared some of the confusion. It was then that I began to wonder if the “pup” from the prologue was in fact Jimmy. I question the meaning of “You shall fly between worlds. The world of the foolish People with little memory shall be your home, while the world of the Story shall be your salvation” (Ponzio, 1999). Could this possibly mean that if Jimmy is in the “pup” Coyote the Trickster refers to, then is he able to understand …show more content…
Eric Landrum, we are provided with two theories for Lucky’s behavior. One possible explanation is provided by G. Stanley Hall, a contributor of the founding of functionalism. His “interests highlight the functioning of consciousness, and how it allows us to adopt and survive in our environment” (Landrum, n.d.). The second is provided by John B. Watson, who described behaviorism, a new approach to psychology. A strong believer of extreme environmentalism, Watson believed “that the situations and context that a person grows up in totally shape how the person behaves” (Landrum, n.d.). Therefore, is mimicking the behavior of a dog and referring to himself with a name commonly used for dogs, Donald Allen Hall’s way of adopting and surviving his environment? Or did his environment forge his dog-like behavior and …show more content…
I can remember standing in aww as I watched the judge, prosecution, and the defense attempt to secure a facility with a vacancy to hold a defendant who was awaiting a psychological evaluation. This situation was all too familiar to the one depicted in Lucky’s Dream: Part One: Waiting. As stated in the VPR Broadcast, State Of Mind: Mental Health & Corrections: Is Incarceration an Alternative to Psychiatric Treatment by Jane Lindholm, “For people who have been charged but not yet convicted of a crime…These are people who have been court-ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation…Right now, the Brattleboro Retreat takes that population. But frequently, they 're not going to the Brattleboro Retreat because the Retreat is full. So they 're stuck in jail instead” (Lindholm, 2013, October 21). How are we supposed to treat those defendants, such as Lucky, when we don’t have an understanding of who they are, where they come from, and the path that led them to that court room? For those who are like Lucky, if we treat them like another defendant, one who does not suffer from a psychological issue, how will they fair in our correctional system? By placing them with the general population, we are leaving our correctional facilities with inmates whom they do not have the training or
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.
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
He effectively balanced appeals to emotion and characters in an attempt to move his readers from a state of pure reading to engaging in drawing images in mind, more exactly, stimulating their imagination. To verify that “Field of dreams” is an idealistic film that treasures America’s icons, the famous celebrity, Jimmy Steward whose movie clip was shown on the movie, was mentioned in the article. More important is that, this influential figure, in that time, can hook reader’s attention once his name appeared. James trickily achieved his goal of certifying and toughening his credibility of the fantastic job of this
Courts, are usually established to either declare a defendant innocent or announce him guilty with a particular sentence depending strictly on the crime. However, the Yuma Mental Health Court is like no other court in the U.S Criminal Justice System. This unique court has specifically been established for two main reasons. The first reason, is to maintain mental ill defendants out of any jails or prisons, in order for them to receive proper treatments. The next reason, is that this court tries to help special defendants by sending them to treatment agencies so they can either be provided with medications or get some form of therapy. Yuma County is very fortunate to have this type of court in their area. In this writing, this author will analyze
Jails as Mental Hospitals. A joint report of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and
Metzner, J. L., & Fellner, J. (2010). Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics. The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 38(1), 104-108.
According to the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons (2013), there are currently 217,862 people incarcerated. Of that total population, 93.3% are men with the remaining 6.7% being women. The current prison populations range from 39-51% over their allotted capacities (James, 2013). Results of overcrowded prisons are seen through increased taxes, lowered staff to inmate ratio and an inability to maintain the structures housing these inmates (James, 2013). Researchers have also determined a correlation between inmate misconduct and overcrowding, adding to the list of negative effects (James, 2013). Along with increasing prison population rates, the diagnoses of mental illness, specifically personality disorders have also risen. The CDC reported in 2011 that at least 25% of US adults have a mental illness and about 20% of US adolescence has a diagnosable ment...
Today’s correctional institutions, policy makers, and supreme courts still continue to ignore the studies displaying the psychological effects of prisons. For example, in recent case challenges against the eighth amendment over solitary confinement have rarely succeeded. This is due to the regulation that conditions must deprive prisoners of at least one identifiable human physical need to be declared unconstitutional. Studies have shown that depriving proper mental stimulus results in extreme mental harm, but because it’s not physical damage courts rarely recognize the extreme mental harm in conditions retaining to confinement. Many court cases related to the psychological damages were inspired by the famous Stanford Prison Experiment that
According to Goomany & Dickinson (2015), there are many concerns that prison may not be an applicable setting for prisoners to be rehabilitated. Many prisoners have pre-existing mental health complications, and prison life can lead to deteriorating mental health issues, increased severity of the disease, and increased risk of prisoners harming themselves. In fact, mental health problems within the prison system are the leading cause of illness for prisoners. Scheyett, Parker, White, Davis, & Wohl (2010) states “A recent report by the United States Department of Health and Human Services indicates that an estimated fifty-six percent of state prison inmates had symptoms or recent history of a mental health problem; forty-seven percent of these reported three or more symptoms of major depression, compared with 7.9% of the general population of the United States” (p. 301). Research has shown that inmates that experience mental health issues are far higher than other prisoners in the general population to commit suicide during their first week of incarceration. Moschetti, Stadelmann, Wangmo, Holly, Bodenmann, Wasserfallen, & Gravier, (2015) comments that 35.1% of prisoners examined during a recent survey suffered from some form of mental disorder and among all inmates forty percent had at least one physical chronic health
In the article “The Mentally Ill Are Mishandled by the Justice System”, Shannon explains how there are approximately 3000 mentally ill inmates in a prison who are unjustfuly sent there. Many mental illnesses are cause by post traumatic experiences such as being abused as a child or being sexually abused as a child. She also explains how many times judges and officers do not fully understand why mentally ill people do what they do, therefore they misunderstand the person’s actions and send them.
Thousands of people statewide are in prisons, all for different reasons. However, the amount of mental illness within prisons seems to go unaddressed and ignored throughout the country. This is a serious problem, and the therapy/rehabilitation that prison systems have do not always help those who are mentally ill. Prison involvement itself can contribute to increased suicide (Hills, Holly). One ‘therapy’ that has increased throughout the years has been the use of solitary confinement, which has many negative effects on the inmates. When an inmate has a current mental illness, prior to entering into the prison, and it goes undiagnosed and untreated, the illness can just be worsened and aggravated.
Every year, nonviolent people are incarcerated for crimes that do not threaten the safety of others only because they have a mental illness. Because of this, 25-30% of inmates are mentally ill (McClealland 16). To prevent this, most jurisdictions have at least one criterion that is reflected on whether or not a person is posing a danger to themselves or others. Some other criteria which can also be connected to a danger such as a disability or inability to provide for one's basic human needs or that some treatment would be crucial for ones wells being. But being committed requires proof that hospitalizing the patient will be the least restrictive in addition to showing a sign of being dangerous ("Commitment." 26). Court stated that involuntary commitment procedures restrict a harmless person to live safely outside an institution despite the fact that they are mentally ill ("Commitment." 27). Polly Jackson Spencer, Bexar County Judge states, “We don't want to send people to jail if they are not a threat to society” (Dayak, Meena, and Gonzales 24). Forcing harmless individuals into jail will not help their illness. In fact, it will only worsen it. Jails are incapable of handling unstable individuals. Because of their incompetence to help inmates, there is a high number of mentally ill being beaten, mistreated, and killed by guards, or ultimately killing themselves (McClealland 16). Many jails don't even test their incoming inmates for any mental illn...
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.
We as a society have been forced to think that everyone in jail deserves what they get, we over look the fact that some have a mental illness that they can’t control over their actions .Taken all we have learned, this information has let me see what goes on, not only in jail, but in society. In this article it talks about people who have mental illness being treated improperly in jail and the rate of suicides is high do to the fact that people are not able to care for himself and feel that they do not belong there. When looking at videos in class I was able to understand why some people do what, some people hurt others and themselves without their control. The main issue of the article is that people with mental illnesses are being sent to jail for crimes that they may not have control over as they are sent to jail they are treated inappropriate by other inmates and guards that don't know how to handle them. The fact that some inmates ha...
Something not very common in prisons is that some prisoners could, through reflecting on their own actions and correcting their own faults, fixing themselves emotionally they would leave prison better humans. Prison can be a place where criminals reflect on their actions and see who they are through other prisoners, and using this a sort of ‘therapy’ where they would better themselves. Yet even though this isn’...