Incarceration For The Mentally Ill Offenders By Providing Treatment Options

As a whole, literature on the topic of mental illness in our country and specifically in our criminal justice system had a reoccurring theme. There are millions of individuals who suffer from mental illness but are improperly being handled through the criminal justice system. These individuals are deemed criminal just by their acts and their mental health state is not overly examine. Jails and prisons are being overcrowded. State prisons and jails are overpopulated anywhere from 15 to 32% (Spending Money in All the Wrong Places: Jails & Prisons).

Authors in this article from the University of California observe and focus on the risks and rates involved in people that have a mental disorder and correlate it with incarceration as well as people with re-incarceration. While performing these studies researchers found an alarming number of people incarcerated had a severe mental illness and substance abuse issues. Much of the knowledge in numbers of people with a mental illness are brought from a correctional view, but researchers here try to also focus on numbers of people in the public mental health system as well.

Despite the fact that my parents have worked in the criminal justice system for many years, I have never given much thought to the treatment of prisoners. As we learned from the readings, the current state of the United States criminal justice system is imperfect to the point of cruelty to those involved in it. This is truer for individuals with a mental illness. Due to a lack of psychiatric facilities throughout Alabama and overcrowding of those that do exist, many criminal offenders with mental illnesses are sent to prisons instead. State prisons are currently overcrowded, leading to substandard conditions such in almost every aspect.

“The criminal justice system is not equipped nor are the professionals working within the system qualified to effectively meet the needs of offenders presenting with mental health issues” (Prior & Jones, 2017, p. 58). Mental health courts were designed to provide diversion for defendants with mental illness into community-supported and court-supervised overseen treatment (“Adult Mental,” n.d.). Making these specialty courts mandatory for the mentally ill would benefit black male defendants the most.

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

Mental health and the criminal justice system have long been intertwined. Analyzing and understanding the links between these two subjects demands for a person to go in to depth in the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, because there are many points of view on whether or not a person’s criminal behavior is due to their mental health. Some believe that an unstable mental state of mind can highly influence a person’s decision of committing criminal actions. Others believe that mental health and crime are not related and that linking them together is a form of discrimination because it insinuates that those in our society that suffer from poor mental health are most likely to become a criminal due to their

In a fight to reduce overcrowding, improve public health and public safety, and reduce the costs of criminal justice and corrections, federal, state and local leaders are constantly looking for alternatives to incarceration. A number of strategies have been put in place to save public funds and improve public health by keeping low-risk, non-violent, possibly drug-involved offenders out of prison or jail while still holding them accountable and securing the safety of our comminutes. These programs have been put in place to help those who don’t necessarily need to be in jail, get their priorities straight while also holding them accountable for their actions. They have been put in place to help reduce incarceration rates, but also help those who may have mental health issues or substance abuse issues that have caused them to make bad decisions (Treatment Court Divisions).

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.

Mental health courts are a resource given to prisoners who would normally be put in prison if they had not decided to join this special program. Mental health court is a court run program by the district attorney’s office in some counties. This program is based off of traditional court room structure but is also paired with community services. Mental health courts solve a lot of different problems within our criminal justice system. The first problem it solves is the

Mental health courts sentence mentally ill convicted offenders to long-term treatment programs rather than incarcerating them in prisons. The programs provide mental health assessments and personalized treatment plans for offenders. (Center for Court Innovation, 2013) In 1997, the first mental health court was established. (California Courts, 2014) There are now over 300 mental health courts in the U.S (Justice Center, 2014)

Treatments are provided for the inmate’s best interest and what may improve their mental and physical health, even though mentally ill inmates have their rights in denying treatment they

Mental health court are similar to the regular criminal law courts, but they are created to get help for the people who have mental health related issues that break laws (Mental Health Court, n.d.). In one of the videos on Kentrell and Kenneth’s court hearing, their probation

This research paper discusses the issues of people who suffer from mental illness being placed in jails instead of receiving the necessary treatment they need. The number of inmates serving time in jail or prison who suffer from mental illness continues to rise. In 2015 the Bureau of Justice reported that sixty five percent of state prisoners and fourth five percent of federal prisoners suffered from mental conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Individuals who suffer from these problems require special mental health treatment for their needs to be met. Many of our prisons and jails lack the necessary resources to care for these inmates and because of that inmates who do not receive the treatment they need are at a higher risk of becoming a repeat offender. Despite the research and findings that show that the criminal justice system is unable to deal with issues dealing with the mentally ill there has been limited solutions put in place. Given the challenges the criminal justice system faces it is important to address the problem and come up with better solutions. This research paper will discuss the various techniques and solutions that scholars have propped and their effect on the issue of mentally ill criminals and how the criminal justice system should approach the problem.

Jails have been described as “de facto mental hospitals” because they have filled the void created when state psychiatric hospitals began closing in the early 1960s through a process known as deinstitutionalization. Supporters of deinstitutionalization thought the process would help individuals suffering from a mental illness live more self-reliantly while being treated by community mental health programs. However, the federal government did not provide the necessary funding to meet the mounting demand for these programs, leaving numerous untreated. Individuals with serious mental illnesses are often poor or homeless and are likely to have substance abuse problems. Therefore, when they are left untreated, they are more likely to commit minor crimes that have been the focus of law enforcement in recent years (H. Richard Lamb and Linda Weinberger).

For a start, this article introduces a reactive intervention by further investigating the penal system and attempts to explain/correlate the overrepresentation of individuals diagnosed with mental health/illness throughout the criminal justice systems in the United States. The article focuses on the comprehensive criminal justice continuum, ranging from all the criminal justice settings, for example, police, courts, and incarceration, to a variety of community-based settings and/or supervision, such as, probation, parole, and reentry to name a few. The article further goes into explaining the person-in-environment theory and suggest that the underlying problem(s) stem not only from a mental health/illness diagnosis, but can be further intensified