Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Treating prisoners with mental illness essay
Annotated bibliography mental health prisons
Hypothesis on prison mental health services
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Treating prisoners with mental illness essay
The mentally ill prison population presents unique challenges for prisons systems. The United States has the highest rate of adult incarceration among developed countries with nearly 2.2 million currently in jails and prisons. According to Human Rights Watch, the staggering rate of incarcerated mentally ill is a result of under-funded, disorganized and fragmented mental health services (2006). Prison systems need to address the needs of the mentally ill population. As Reginald Wilkinson, Director of the Ohio Rehabilitation and Corrections noted, Correction agencies will have to deal with this population sooner or later. Prisoners have a constitutional right to mental health care while incarnated and many systems have been sued for what the plaintiffs consider to be lack of mental health service delivery” (Gaseau 2004). Gradually over the past several years as the number of mentally ill offenders has drastically increased some states such as Ohio and Maryland have recognized that this is a large population that needs to be better managed and have begun to reform the treatment programs and care for the mentally ill; however, not all states have been as proactive at addressing the problem. Dealing with the mentally ill prison population is another major problem that needs to tackle by all state and federal prisons as this population continues to grow.
History
The history of the mentally ill prison population can be traced back to 1827 in the heart of the Age of Enlightenment. Prior to 1827 that population of prisoners were treated the same as ordinary criminals, sometimes in deplorable conditions. The first prominent figure to begin leading reform in mentally ill prison population field was Louis Dwight. “Louis Dwight a Congregati...
... middle of paper ...
...o come up with strategies and programs to effectively deal with the issue. Some states, including Ohio and Massachusetts, have made proactive progress in treating the mentally ill inmates, but many still have a long way to go. With financially strapped states this will continue to be a challenge. Prisoners have a constitutional right to mental health care while incarcerated. By effectively treating mentally ill criminal’s society benefits as a whole and the community is safer. The prison is also safer for both the inmates and the prison officials. All state and federal correctional systems need to be proactive with confronting this problem to avoid law suits, protect the constitutional rights of the inmates, provide for safer prison population, and a safer society by developing and implementing an effective treatment plans for the mentally ill prison population.
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
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.
Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...
...tally insane in jails and almshouses in Massachusetts. In 1843 she presents her findings to the Massachusetts Legislature and by 1860 twenty states would follow her advice for building new insane asylums and prisons. The institutional reform movement was successful in that twelve new prisons were built and punishments were less harsh than they had previously been but they were unsuccessful in improving the treatment of criminal and the mentally insane. Institutions turned into places of brutality and neglect. Penitentiaries made their prisoners perform labor, solitary confinement, and they were severely punished if they disobeyed. Institutional reforms improved the lot of the mentally ill only slightly which meant graduating from being chained in basements, beaten, starved and naked to being locked in a mental institution at the mercy of experimenting doctors.
Mentally ill offenders face many challenges while being incarcerated and after being released. Rehabilitation is effective on mentally ill offenders by reducing their symptoms of distress and improving their behavior.
The prison reform started January 1st 1870 and ended December 31st 1970. This reform bettered the prison system and changed prison and mental institutions not only in America but as well as Europe. Some successes that came from this reform was the widespread establishment of mental institutions, increased attention to prisoner’s rights, redefining prison procedure, and the attempt to cure mental illness although Dorothea Dix’s federal bill did fail. This reform swept the country and it all begin with Dorothea Dix thanks to her the prison system was changed
The overpopulation in the prison system in America has been an on going problem in the United States for the past two decades. Not only does it effect the American people who are also the tax payers to fund all of the convicts in prisons and jails, but it also effects the prisoners themselves. Family members of the prisoners also come into effect. Overpopulation in prison cause a horrible chain reaction that causes nothing but suffering and problems for a whole bunch people. Yet through all the problems that lye with the overpopulation in prisons, there are some solutions to fix this ongoing huge problem in America.
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.
Public opinion polls support expanding such treatment to reduce violence. It is tempting to capitalize on this sentiment to call for increased funding, but there are ample Reasons to advocate for better mental health services. State funding cuts are limiting access to needed public services, and criminalization of people with mental illness is a worsening public health crisis. Persons with serious mental illness are more likely to be placed in jails and prisons than hospitals.” (.424)
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.
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.
These prisons help them get stable by providing treatment programs to them for they can learn how to become stable, have self-control and to function properly. After these mentally ill inmates serve their time, jails that are associated with community clinics who provide treatment, on-site screening and follow ups after these inmates have been released. These offenders have a challenge of being in isolation or solitary due to being harmful by attacking inmates or prison guards and also can cause self- harm to
I chose to write about mental health in corrections because I know of several people with mental illness who have served time in jail and prison. The closure of several psychiatric and mental health hospitals in the United States has led to an increase in incarceration rates. The corrections system is not well-equipped to handle the mentally ill because they have a lack of mental health resources available to the inmates. Additionally, mentally ill inmates cost the taxpayers more money than the average inmate. Mentally ill inmates are often repeat offenders.
When thinking of prison, like one normally and frequently does, the thought of high security prison being run like a mental institution probably doesn't cross your mind. When the thought of jail comes to mind, one thinks about those who have committed heinous crimes and need to pay the price. But in Ohio after mental hospital was closed and patients, stable or not, released back into society many mentally ill did not know how to cope with the transition and quickly found themselves behind bars. Seeing as the courts are more apt to send those with mental diseases to a correctional Institution after committing crime, petty or not. In the institution, they would be able to receive the help needed to become more stable.