Essay On Incarceration

Regardless of what you might see on TV the verdict of “not guilty by the reason of insanity” is an immensely rare plea for anyone. A majority of offenders with a mental illness still end up incarcerated. Even though the United States only makes up 5% of the world's population we account for 25% of the world's prisoners. Which converts to 2.2 million prisoners and about 1.2 million of those people have a mental illness (Fellner). Mental illness within our jails and prisons has become very prevalent within our correctional systems over the last 10 years. The number of men and women who have a mental illness that end up in jail or prison grows day by day. For those who do not go into the prison with a mental illness, will very likely develop some form of mental illness after being released from incarceration. The mentally ill do not belong in prison, the purpose for incarceration is retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation, and though it is originally meant for all of these purposes, it has lost its meaning. Correctional facilities are not built to provide treatment for the mentally ill, and the people who have been diagnosed with a mental illness cannot get the long-term treatment they need inside of a prison cell.

But, why is it that these numbers are increasing in jails and prisons? According to the study “Mentally Ill Inmates: Financial Impacts and Opportunities for the Future” by Nancy A. DeFerrari, the number of beds for mentally ill individuals has decreased significantly in the last 30 or so years. She states that the number has decreased from close to 600,000 in the 1960s to about 40,000 or less presently. DeFerrari also makes the point that just because the beds for these people are decreasing, does not mean that the number of these individuals are too.

For over centuries, the only form of punishment and discouragement for humans is through the prison system. Because of this, these humans or inmates, are sentenced to spend a significant part of their life in a confined, small room. With that being said, the prison life can leave a remarkable toll on the inmates life in many different categories. The first and arguably most important comes in the form of mental health. Living in prison with have a great impact on the psychological part of your life. For example, The prison life is a very much different way of life than what us “normal” humans are accustomed to living in our society. Once that inmate takes their first step inside their new society, their whole mindset on how to live and communicate changes. The inmate’s psychological beliefs about what is right and wrong are in questioned as well as everything else they learned in the outside world. In a way, prison is a never ending mind game you are playing against yourself with no chance of wining. Other than the mental aspect of prison, family plays a very important role in an inmate’s sentence. Family can be the “make it or break it” deal for a lot of inmates. It is often said that “when a person gets sentenced to prison, the whole family serves the sentence.” Well, for many inmates that is the exact case. While that prisoner serves their time behind bars, their family is on the outside waiting in anticipation for their loved ones to be released. In a way, the families

Given the number of incarcerated inmates who suffer from some form of mental illness, there are growing concerns and questions in the medical field about treatment of the mentally ill in the prison system. When a person with a mental illness commits a crime or break the law, they are immediately taken to jail or sent off to prison instead of being evaluated and placed in a hospital or other mental health facility. “I have always wondered if the number of mentally ill inmates increased since deinstitutionalization” Since prison main focus is on the crimes inmates are incarcerated; the actual treatment needed for the mentally ill is secondary. Mentally ill prisoners on the surface may appear to be just difficult inmates depending on the

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

Around the 1970’s and 1980’s around the United States many mental hospitals were shut down. There were many reasons why they closed these Asylums was because money, and knowing that there was only about twenty county asylums were built around the country. The asylums also known as the Looney bin was established in Britain after passing in 1808 county asylum act. There were so many patients in these asylums around the world in 1955 about 558,239 severely mentally ill people in the United States were accounted for. Now in these times any mentally ill people don’t get help they just go straight to jail without proper diagnosis or treatment. People need to know these people need extreme care and treatment. Even regular people or considered the norm in today’s society eventually go crazy when they’re in prison too long. We have as much people that are mentally ill as regularly incarcerated. There is one prison in Houston Texas that does take care there mentally ill. We have about 2.2 million

In the United States there is in extremely high rate of incarceration and mass imprisonment. Policies and ideas for change are being brought to the table on a daily basis. Is it worth it? Is the question that we always have to ask ourselves and will justice truly be served at the end of the day. Well throughout this course I have found that there is never a true solution to crime rates in general only ideas to decrease problems that have yet to stop rising. For example, the War on Drugs in the early 1980’s and the “broken window” policy in the mid 1970’s are both examples of putting water on the fire but never putting the fire completely out. These policy have

The United States criminal justice system has been continuously increasing incarceration among individuals who suffer from a sever mental illness. As of 2007 individuals with severe mental illness were over twice as likely to be found in prisons than in society (National Commission of Correctional Health Care, 2002, as cited in Litschge &Vaughn, 2009). The offenses that lead to their commitment in a criminal facility, in the majority of cases, derive from symptoms of their mental illness instead of deviant behavior. Our criminal justice system is failing those who would benefit more from the care of a psychiatric rehabilitation facility or psychiatric hospital by placing them in correctional facilities or prisons.

In today’s media, countries such as the United States are portrayed as having corrupt legal systems which are responsible for mass incarceration. However, many do not know this is also a problem in Canada. New bills have recently been put in place to incarcerate more people for non-violent crimes. The poor are being kept off the streets by being sent to prison. Different races make up a small population in Canada, but a large population in its prison system.

Over-incarceration in the United States is an issue that is quite known, but there hasn't been much done in order to reduce the amount of inmates incarcerated. In specific, Dade County Jail located in Miami has received criticism regarding the over population of inmates in their facility. So much that processing procedure of new inmates was switched from Dade County Jail to Turner Guilford Knight. " The main jail, across from Miami-Dade criminal courthouse, was built in 1959 and never intended to hold such a large population. Inmates sued for overcrowding in the 1970s — a federal judge later declared the conditions unconstitutional." (Ovalle, "Notorious Miami-Dade psychiatric jail ward finally shuttered", 2015) During its operating times, Dade

Mental illnesses are extremely pricy and dangerous. The staff has to be extra cautions with mentally disabled prisoners because they are more dangerous. The prison system does not have enough money to be able to maintain high-risk prisoners. “The average cost of keeping an older inmate incarcerated is about $69,000 a year”(Regan) it’s an outrageous amount of money. A Tennessee State prison gave Dr. Regan, Alderson, and Dr. William Regan gave data on older inmates who had mental illnesses. The study focused on the population and their mental disorder and the crime committed. 671 prisoners where tested in the study and 109 people where diagnosed with a mental illness: Out of the 109 people with a mental disorder only 13% where women and 87% where men. The most common crime for both genders with a mental disorder was murder. Women who committed murder suffered from depression illness. Men who committed crime in their older age committed sex crimes and where diagnosed with dementia. Our prisons are not equipped to be able to handle mentally disable prisoners. Mentally disorder people need to be in a mental house that can help them. It is not right to incarcerate someone who is sick.

Too many of the mentally ill are resulting in jail rather than a mental institute where they belong. The mental ill purposely commit a minor crime just to get off the streets because of the lack of resources. As Ana Swanson, reporter for Wonkblog specializing in data visualization, argues that majority of these mentally ill patients receive the lack of treatment for the reason of being put in a prison rather than a mental institute. Swanson states: “American Prisons and Jails housed an estimated 356,268 inmates with several mental illness in 2012… That figure is more than 10 times the number of mentally ill patients in State psychiatric hospitals in the same year – about 35,000 people” (Swanson).

The minimum security is federal prison camps adjacent to other federal prisons near military bases. Male prisoners who need only minimum security are set up in camps and those who will be transitioned [Passive voice] back into society and served their sentence will be set-up in a halfway house.

There are many people with mental disorders in U.S.A and many of those people end up in jail. Some people may think this is good, worse people in jail right, wrong. So many mentally ill people are prosecuted and sometimes are not even given the option to go to somewhere that is more qualified to hold them. The words mentally ill to describe a person often gets lost in context when people talk about this subject. The definition of a mentally ill person is “a person who thinks, acts, and behaves differently”. There are reasons why this is bad and they are it is bad to keep the mentally ill in prison, how much this issue effects, and how harsh it is for the mentally ill in prisons. This issue needs to be stopped.

It is common knowledge that the American prison system has grown exponentially in the last few decades. The prison population within the last forty years has risen by two million inmates. Multiple factors such as overcrowding and cost cutting have also decreased the quality of life within prisons by an order of magnitude. With this rising statistic, it becomes increasingly urgent to understand the effect of incarceration on our prisoners and whether the reformation process is actually doing more harm than good.