Our Screwed Up Punishment System

In American jails there is a frightening amount of inmate suicides that occur, and seem to stay under the radar and unspoken about. There are many different contributing factors that can lead to an inmate ultimately choosing to take his or her own life. Being sentenced to jail can be difficult for various inmates to handle and one can have a risk of developing a mental illness if he or she has not already been diagnosed as mentally ill. A mental illness can become a battle with one’s self that some cannot win, and only see darkness ahead. Inmates being confined in jail can lead to a breaking point, which is suicide. Other factors include inmates being stressed out and fearing imprisonment. Jails across the United States have to take initiative regarding inmate suicides or else the suicide rates could increase. Without treatment, awareness, and prevention there will be no improvement in decreasing the amount of inmate suicides. The conversation of inmate suicide has to be had between jail officials, inmates, and society because there is help out there and everyone must know that it is not cowardly to ask for help.

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

According to the American Psychological Association, a 2014 article states, “Mental illness among today's inmates is also pervasive, with 64 percent of jail inmates, 54 percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners reporting mental health concerns” (Incarnation Nation). This statistic is appalling and should not be considered an acceptable number. More than half of jailers and prisoners report mental health concerns; this is static that should not be taken lightly and needs to be addressed. Mentally incarnated people and prison cells do not go well together; it creates a recipe for disaster for the individual suffering behind bars. The purpose of prison is to “retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation”

This PBS special raises the question whether jails and prisons are turning into the new asylums for the inmates that are mentally ill. Psychiatric hospitals across America have closed and the burden has become on the police department to handle locking up the people that would normally do better in mental hospitals. After 1960 antipsycotic medications were developed and available for treatment and reduced the need for hospitals by 84%. (Gideon & Sung pg 264) The crimes that they are committing are not violent; they are minor property or theft crimes or trespassing. Currently there are 500,000 mentally ill that are in jail and not in the hospitals where they could be cared

Prisons have become asylums. There are ten times as many prisoners receiving help than there are patients in psychiatrist. It has become a simpler or only way for some to obtain help; to self-medicate and land in prison. Getting help in communities around the nation is becoming difficult Therefore, a large portion of inmates are being left untreated and have found their ways onto the prison system. Because Prisons are unequipped many are left with no psychiatry help or with only medication to hand out. Prison officials are mostly untrained for these individuals and treat them alike others unknowingly inflicting more damage to the individuals, others try their best to provide treatment but understand that the prison cycle is difficult to get

Many cultures have viewed mental illness as a form of religious punishment or demonic possession. In Ancient Greek and Roman writings mental illness was categorized as a religious or personal problem. Individuals who are mentally ill are once again being mistreated by society and being place in prison. Prison is not a place for people for are mentally ill, jails were created as a form of criminal punishment for offenders and not a home for people who are mentally ill. In many cases, the welfare of offenders are not acknowledged because their is a misconception that all people with mental disabilities are a danger to the public. People become a greater threat to themselves that others when they are not receiving the appropriate care. Providing

How does addressing mental health care issues affect the U.S prison system?Mental health cases still remains a challenge within the criminal justice system about 16.9 percent of the adults who are imprisoned have a serious mental illness. A lot of times, offenders do not receive the appropriate treatment needed, because of the misconception that all people with mental disabilities are a danger to the public. There are so many missed opportunities to reform the prison system because mental health care is not considered a necessary step in the process trying, convicting, rehabilitation of offenders.

You provided clear insight of mental illness in details, the different types that are suffered by offenders incarcerated, and the factors of their behavior. In fact, aggressive behavior is learned just as a child learns to walk and talk. Some mental health individuals suffer from erratic behaviors and mood swings are able to manage their behaviors through treatment and medication while others tend to stop or refuse their medication and treatment in order to continue their rapid behavior changes and mood swings. Lastly, it is a challenging task dealing with mental health individuals, in a correctional setting, offenders could deny mental health at any time making treatment and medication difficult to manage.

Violence can be harmful and destructive to the psychological, physical or material state of others (Steadman & Cocozza, 1978). When the offender is a forensic psychiatric patient it is considered that the individual is unfit to stand trial or unable to understand the responsibility and reality of the crime (Douglas, Ogloff, & Hart, 2003). Judicial systems take into consideration to what extend the crime was commited by a person due to a mental dissability and resprctfull mental health institutions require reliable tools for mental health risk assessment and also management of offenders (Gendreau, Little, & Goggin, 1996; Doyle, Dolan & McGovern, 2002); Also needed, to assert equitable

The Criminal Justice System is inclined to incarcerate drug offenders with mental illnesses rather than provide treatment which is causing overcrowding in our prisons resulting in more violence within correction system. In this research we will examine the current screening, counseling and treatment that is provide while being incarcerated to drug offenders with mental illnesses. We will also explore options to identify these drug offenders to receive proper treatment in the place of incarceration. We will briefly identify three criminological theories and how they are connected to our topic. This research is not to sway anyone to think

We are always hearing about how veterans need mental and physical treatment when they come home from tours of duty. This is true. However, they are not the only ones. Prison inmates should also have those same privileges. Nothing in the world could justify some of the cries that inmates may or may not have committed, but in reality things like insanity and schizophrenia are true illness that can’t be controlled on their own. With the assistance of therapist and psychologists, these inmates can find value in their lives. If suicide is the largest cause of death within the prison systems, the finding meaning in their lives is all these inmates want. Not only are mental illnesses are within the minds of inmates but also addictions. If these inmates with drug or alcohol addictions can be cleansed of the addiction, then why should we stop them? Withdrawals from a substance can literally kill those who suffer from them.

All studies found that the occurrence of violence was more closely associated with whether someone was male, poor, and abusing either alcohol or drugs and that those three factors alone could predict violent behavior with or without any sign of mental illness. If someone fit all three of those categories, the likelihood of them committing a violent act was high, even if they weren’t also mentally ill. If someone fit none, then mental illness was highly unlikely to be predictive of violence. Jeffrey Swanson, a medical sociologist and professor of psychiatry at Duke University study debunked two myths,” Swanson said. “One: people with mental illness are all dangerous. Well, the clear majority are not. And the other myth: that there’s no connection at all. There is one. It’s quite small, but it’s not completely nonexistent.” “We need to get upstream and try to prevent the unpredicted: how to have healthier, less violent

A prison has always been a place to imprison others, often to take criminals away from society. However, people do not know that a lot of these criminals have some mental health issues leading to their own mental destruction; they are ill. People with a mental disability have always been of great importance when talking about the Criminal Justice System. Mental health issues should protect someone from being convicted of a crime.

First off, the produces made a large emphasis on how hard the people working in the jails work to try to help these people who are struggling tremendously. An example of this was the weekly jail meetings to talk about all of the mentally ill inmates and what has gone on that week, along with what can be done to better help them. With this being said there was also a lot of focus on just how limited their resources were so only so much help is available to these incarcerated patients. Furthermore, both the patients and employee’s of the jail both agreed that the best help came to the mentally ill if they were in prison. This is very counterintuitive and was a huge point of focus for the movie and was one of the main points presented. Not to mention, they presented a video of Robert Bankston, an inmate in an Ohio jail, who was a Paranoid Schizophrenic. This video of Robert really drove home just how hard it is for all parties involved, including: the inmates, the correction officers, the nurses, and the doctors. One of the main points made during all of this was that jail was not the place for the mentally ill. Even though the inmates were most comfortable there and even though they got the best help, it just goes to add on to why this is such a large issue at hand. The fact of the matter is there is no place for the mentally ill to get

Although, as an officer, he sees a clear link between drugs, crime and mental instability, he does not believe there is a plain link between crime and mental illness. “both mental illness and crime are massive umbrellas of completely different matters. A link? no, I wouldn 't say there was.”