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Criminalization of the mentally ill
Mental illness and our society
An essay about mental illness and society
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Wouldn’t it be completely irrational to sentence every mentally ill individual to jail purely because they suffered from a mental illness? Often, mentally ill people behave in an eccentric manner and allure the attention of police officers who do not differentiate the mentally ill from mentally stable people and immediately charge them with misdemeanors. There are approximately 300,000 inmates, with the number increasing every year, which suffer from a mental illness and do not receive proper treatment. Jails are not adequately equipped to care for mentally ill inmates, which can lead to an escalation of an inmate’s illness. Society has failed to provide enough social resources for citizens suffering from psychiatric illnesses in its community, transferring mentally unstable individuals between mental institutions and jails, when in fact adequate aid such as providing proper medication, rehabilitation opportunities, and more psychiatric hospitals in communities is a necessity to reconstitute these individuals. Many times people with an untreated mental illness behave in an abnormal manner that is disturbing to the public, causing them to be perceived as frightening and dangerous which attracts the attention of police officers. Harrington agrees that, “Without the medication they need to keep their illness in check, they sometimes lapse into psychophysics and behave in bizarre ways.”(Harrington) A mentally unstable individual’s perspective of what is, and what is not acceptable varies from that of a healthy person. Therefore, they are unable to comprehend proper public behavior. From public urination to public nesciences, they are charged with misdemeanors and sentenced to jail. Shannon Fiack emphasizes that “There is a fundamen... ... middle of paper ... ... the mentally ill people. Shannon Fiack. "The Mentally Ill Are Mishandled by the Justice System" by American Civil Liberties Union. Mental Illness and Criminal Behavior. Shannon Fiack, Ed. At Issue Series. Greenhaven Press, 2009. American Civil Liberties Union, "Mental Illness and the Death Penalty in the United States," ACLU, January 31, 2005. Reproduced by permission. 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.
In the book Crazy in America by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, she illustrated examples of what people with mental illness endure every day in their encounters with the criminal justice system. Shayne Eggen, Peter Nadir, Alan Houseman and Joseph Maldonado are amongst those thousands or more people who are view as suspected when in reality they are psychotic who should be receiving medical assistance instead, of been thrown into prison. Their stories also show how our society has failed to provide some of its most vulnerable citizens and has allowed them to be treated as a criminals. All of these people shared a common similarity which is their experience they went through due to their illness.
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
If we asked most people about insanity the image of a person in a straight jacket, bouncing off padded walls would jump to mind. They might not admit it for fear of being politically incorrect, but the image is a general association with insanity. Yet, most people who suffer from insanity live every day to the fullest—in society. We lock away only those who we “believe” are clinically insane, and we lock sentence most of them without a chance at trial.
This creates the problem of a patient who is no longer psychotic, needing to remain in a hospital because the legal committee will not release him/her. The question whether the hospital is the proper place for that patient and if public safety is an actual concern is at hand. This then raises issues on how to treat a mentally ill individual who has committed a crime after recovering from their psychotic state, to ensure they will not relapse and become a danger to society. In various countries, there is no legal substitute for prevention. In the article, Mentally Ill People Who Commit Crimes: Punishment or Treatment, the author Dr. Melamed proposes the question, "If the individual is no longer ill, but still dangerous, should he or she remain in the hospital or be transferred to a nonmedical incarceration facility?" While some believe treatment is a better alternative, society is unable to bear the costs of treatment/ rehabilitation which means the individual will be transferred to an incarceration facility. In Connecticut, annually, the average cost for an inmate is $33,000 while the average cost for a mental hospital is $500,000. However, psychiatrist cost more than the average prison guards, the additional $467, 000 does not out way the cost for continued treatment in an outpatient facility
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.
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 issue of executing mentally ill criminals has been widely debated among the public. They debate on whether it is right or wrong to execute a person who does not possess the capacity to think correctly. The mental illness is a disease that destroys a person’s memory, emotion, and prevent one or more function of the mind running properly. The disease affects the way a person thinks, feels, behaves and relates to others.When a person is severely mentally ill, his/ her ability to appreciate reality lack so they aspire to do stuff that is meaningless. The sickness is triggered by an amalgamation of genetic, and environmental factors not a personal imperfection. On the death penalty website, Scott Panetti who killed his mother in-law and father-in-law reports that since 1983, over 60 people with mental illness or retardation have been executed in the United States (Panetti). The American Civil Liberties Union says that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who suffered from an earnest mental illness (ACLU).Some people apply the term crazy or mad to describe a person who suffers from astringent psychological disorders because a mad person look different than a mundane human being. The time has come for us to accept the fact that executing mentally ill offenders is not beneficial to society for many reasons. Although some mentally ill criminals have violated the law, we need to sustain a federal law that mentally ill criminals should not be put to death.
Lamb, H. R. (2004). Mentally ill persons in the criminal justice system: Some perspectives. Psychiatric Quarterly, 108-126.
As a result, mentally ill inmates are more likely to be abused, beaten, and raped. Due to the circumstances, coupled with their mental instability, these inmates also have a greater risk of committing suicide. They also cause more disciplinary problems than regular inmates, undoubtedly caused by their mental health problems. Mentally ill inmates are more inclined to break the rules and are involved in more fights and physical assaults than most inmates, resulting in more time in solitary confinement. ( sulfur, 2016)
Several states authorize police officers to arrest mentally ill people who have not broken any law. It is argued that this process is a way to promote public order. Hospitals also transfer mentally ill patients to jail in order to deal with the overflow. It is not uncommon for children to be confined to criminal detention centers because there is a lack of facilities for severely mentally ill children. Relying on the criminal justice systems to be surrogate mental health systems conflicts with the basic notions of justice. (Aufderheide,
Seltzer, T., 2005, ‘Mental health courts – A misguided attempt to address the criminal justice system’s unfair treatment of people with mental illnesses’, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 570-586.
Crime can be described combination between both behavior and mental factors. This will prove incredibly crucial in the definition of crime in relation to mental illness. Many of those that commit crimes are not convicted due to their illness so it is important to note, for the purpose of this analysis, that all illegal activity is considered crime, regardless of conviction (Monahan and Steadman 1983).
When such bad behavior is exhibited, even though it is due to a mental illness, it often can make people unwilling to help because they are so difficult to deal with. They just see the simplest option is to lock them up or put them in segregation, which does not do any good to the individual suffering from the mental illness. What is also not often considered is that 98% of inmates do get released back into the public. When they do not get adequate help for their mental health issues, they often cause problems when they are released and end up back in jail or prison. Inmates on medication while in the institution are only given two weeks’ worth of that medication when released, but it often takes around three months to get an appointment to see a doctor to receive more, which contributes to the
History shows that signs of mental illness and abnormal behavior have been documented as far back as the early Greeks however, it was not viewed the same as it is today. The mentally ill were previously referred to as mad, insane, lunatics, or maniacs. W.B. Maher and B.A. Maher (1985) note how many of the terms use had roots in old English words that meant emotionally deranged, hurt, unhealthy, or diseased. Although early explanations were not accurate, the characteristics of the mentally ill have remained the same and these characteristics are used to diagnose disorders to date. Cultural norms have always been used to assess and define abnormal behavior. Currently, we have a decent understanding of the correlates and influences of mental illness. Although we do not have complete knowledge, psychopathologists have better resources, technology, and overall research skills than those in ancient times.
By Fire: Writings on the Arab Spring by Tahar Ben Jelloun is a book about the injustices that took place in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region before and during the Arab Spring revolt. Ben Jelloun entirety of his work is written in French, although his first language is Arabic. Today he lives in Paris and continues to write. He has been short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Translated by Rita Nezami from French to English and published in 2016 by Northwestern University Press, the book is composed of three parts: the translator’s introduction, a nonfiction piece, “The Spark,” and a novella, “By Fire”. By Fire, the first fictional account published on the Arab Spring, reimagines the true-life self-immolation of Mohamed