Mental Illness Inmates

Everyday correctional officials work to deal with mental health inmates. Often hotly debated, many search for ways to work with this growing population. Glaze and Bonczar (2009) estimate around 2.3 million people are incarcerated within the US and of those, 20 percent suffer from some form of mental disorder. Even with such a high number, the rate of mental illnesses within the prison system is on the climb. Many of these inmates will remain incarcerated and receive little to no treatment for their mental issues. This essay, will look at the practices associated when dealing with mental illness and discuss the strategies on dealing with this growing issue.

There are some differences between a normal criminal and a criminal that suffers from a mental illness in the criminal justice system. For example one of the many fundamentals to our criminal justice system is the principle that no one can be tried or adjudged to punishment while mentally incompetent. Trials for mentally unstable people have been modified and are run by different guidelines. Unlike a regular convict, most mentally unstable convicts are unable to comprehend or are unable to complete a trial. Once a convict with a mental illness is convicted or awaiting trail their every medical need must be accommodated within the faculty and it's staff. Without the proper medical care a person with mental illness can become

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

The Supreme Court has allowed and given permission to the government and the independent states to freely decide to allow or ban the execution of the perceptually ill. Texas, from the 12 of the 40 death penalty states that have prohibited the execution of mentally ill persons, is the only state that has not done anything to comply with any regards to this matter (Ellis, Fiorenza, Rodney par 8). This is the reason we see more executions of people with mental retardation. There are no legitimate rules stated by the government and state of Texas on who can be exempt and who cannot be exempt. The only determinate is the measurable level of sanity in a person. There are ways around the death penalty for people who are not in their conscious being/ state, but in Texas this is something that gets decided by a group of people and what they believe is the right decision. In this case, what circumstances are considered in the decision of death punishment for the insane? According to the death penalty people with a mental illness, there life and death decisions are decided upon their IQ and their level of

In the Frontline presentation, “The New Asylums”, the program explored the lives in prison of several Ohio inmates. The presentation presented numerous distinct issues of the treatment of the mentally ill in the prison system. The most significant issues presented within the program were the medical treatment received both in and out of the prison system, factors that influence punishment, isolation and medication, the length of the sentencing the mentally ill receive, and why prisons seem to have become the new asylums.

But mentally ill individuals are usually unsafe if we make them one. Mental illness does not always lead to violence. In cases where violence occurs, the incident normally results from the same reasons as with a regular person; thus, feeling threatened, excessive use of alcohol and/or drugs, etc. However, some offenses that the mentally ill commits leave the government no option but to incarcerate them. These crimes also draw some people’s attention to the wrong side, making them agree with the government plan to imprison them. One of the cases that I believe contributes to this is Tarasoff v. The Regiments of the University of California’s case. Tarasoff v. The Regiments of the University of California is the case that flickered communities to look more into finding ways to protect the community (imprisoning the ill). This case consists of the premeditated murder of Tatiana Tarasoff by Prosenjit Poddar, who detailed to his therapist that he would commit the murder. Unfortunately, after all the assistance through therapy, Poddar still committed the crime. Situations like these made some people lose hope with psychiatric centers. Instead, they see mentally ill as criminals who are using their illness to their

In this society it is easy to dismiss people as crazy, lazy, or violent without knowing a person’s full background. We all come from different walks of the life and we have a tendency to turn a blind eye to that fact. I look at our prison system and see an array of people incarcerated for many different reasons. The background and upbringing of a person plays a vital role in the type of person someone is going be when they grow up. A person who grew up in a home of violence will have to make a decision about their future. The things seen as a child will either cause a person to break mentally or they will have the determination to do better for their family and themselves. In some cases, a person will have to seek help in order to obtain

Many people see the mentally ill as crazed individuals that commit peculiar crimes that they don’t necessarily get punished for. That is not a completely inaccurate statement. Research has been going on for decades to try to see if there is in fact a link between the mentally impaired and violence. First physicians attempted to put together an archetype that would help them guess if the mentally ill patient in question was at a high risk to be violent. But that is all they were; merely guesses as to how likely a person was to commit violent acts. The first real studies done to correlate the mentally ill and their threshold of violence was done the 1970s. These tests showed that clinicians are twice as likely to be wrong as they are right when

A few solutions for the rising mentally ill inmates in prison is to : keep a working public mental health treatment system so that those that are mentally ill do not end up in prison or jail. Redo the mental illness treatment laws and practices in communities that will help eliminate obstacles to treatment for those people that are too ill to recognize they in face need help. This will help these individuals before they are so out of the normal that they commit acts that result in their arrest. Reform jail and prison treatment laws so inmates with mental illness can receive appropriate and necessary treatment just as inmates with medical conditions receive appropriate and necessary medical treatment. Implement and promote jail diversion programs

Since 1978 the state of California has successfully executed 13 people on death row. For decades capital punishment still remains the answer to violent and heinous crimes of the convicted. The death penalty delays closure for the families and majority are often flawed and overturned. Capital punishment causes problems within itself, those such as the cost to keep the public policy running. It is committed by an individual or insisted upon by the government, killing is still cruel in any form that it is given. Even though it is a

The article Mentally Ill Inmates Prone to Violence After Release: Study by Robert Preidt on September 3rd 2015 in Healthday discusses how prisoners with mental and substance-use disorders are more likely to commit violent crimes after their release than other inmates. Researchers did a study of ex-convicts in Sweden to get their results. 42 percent of men and 60 percent of women were diagnosed with at least one mental disorder prior to release. Researchers have found that the more co-existing psychiatric disorders the ex-inmates had, the greater risk of committing violent crimes. One in seven prisoners has a psychotic illness or major depression. In an average of three years, one quarter of men and 11 percent of women were convicted of

Individuals with mental illness state that being in this type of environment causes them to feel alone. This type of feeling from being confined leads to depression and severe self-harm (such as the prisoners who had cuts all over his arms). In addition, many inmates become delusional and have hallucinations, which is another huge issue that causes many of the behavior issues. There is one positive effect of mentally ill being incarcerated (in some cases) because they are able to get medication that they were otherwise not able to get when on the streets.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, with over two million people in prisons or jails across the country as of August 2016 (Morrissey, Domino, & Cuddeback, 2016). This number represents a 500% increase over the past three decades (Morrissey, et al.). Many individuals who are incarcerated suffer from at least one mental health or substance abuse disorder, with many having two or more co-occurring disorders. Mental health services in the correctional system have not kept pace with the rapid rise in the numbers of individuals who are incarcerated and in need of treatment in the U.S. Budget cuts and staff shortages have caused a lack of adequate mental health services and treatment throughout the correctional department. Additionally, the rise of for-profit prisons has created a situation where the rehabilitation of offenders is often

How does the Death penalty tie to psychology? The death penalty is a punishment resulting death for a crime such as, first degree murders or terrorism. The different types of death penalties that can be executed are lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, firing squad, and Hanging. There are 19 states that consider the death penalty to be inhumane. Many killers have behavior issues or even can be considered to have psychological problems. A man that were put on Death row for murdering several people would be Anthony Sowell. Both Derrick and Anthony have psychological issues which come from events in their lives. Criminals with the death penalty tend to have unresolved mental issues

Mental illness and deviance fit together like a puzzle. Many times if someone commits a crime or does something so insanely crazy, people are quick to say “Well, they were mentally ill”. Although, that is not always the case, a lot of the time it is. If someone is an excessive drinker, people will label them mentally ill. They obviously must have something wrong with them if they just drink all the time. If someone commits a murder, they will be labeled mentally ill. If someone does drugs, robs a store, commits suicide, and so many more things – they will automatically be labeled as someone who is mentally ill. People will plead insanity so that they don’t get the death penalty in prison. Pretty much every time, if someone