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Mentally Ill In Prisons Essay

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Why are there so many mentally ill persons in our prisons today? The problem for both corrections and the mentally ill began when state mental hospitals across the U.S. began shutting down, in a process that was called “deinstitutionalization.” (Gannon, 2011) The patients were released into their communities without the proper support structure of a closed and strict environment. This in turn caused some patients to go off their medications, other patients who were poor and homeless were simply unable to get their medications, either way these patients were out on the streets and they started committing crimes. This was the start of the rise of mentally ill persons in the prison system today. According to the experts there are around two to …show more content…

It would enhance independent day to day living skills and help with internal control. This would promote a safer environment in prison and enhance community safety upon release. Unfortunately, prisons are not equipped for this and cannot respond appropriately. Mental health services in prisons are understaffed, the prisons are not sufficient, and there are not enough programs. This by no way means that the prison staff doesn’t want to help or don’t care, the problem is that mental health staff working in prisons find they face impossible challenges such as: large caseloads, a prison sub culture that is unsympathetic to the needs of the mentally ill, budgeting problems, elected officials who are unwilling to provide the necessary funds to the prisons to make sure there are ample mental health care resources available, and overworked staff that simply cannot respond to every psychiatric episode. The facts are the mentally ill in prisons today present a serious challenge to a staff who is trying to manage treatment concerns with concerns from the administrators and so far there has been no resolution to this growing problem. (Mental Illness, Human Rights, and US Prisons,

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