Prisoners with Special Needs

More often than not, if John Q. Public is asked the purpose or goals of our American correctional system the reply is incapacitation, retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. However, what we are really asking for our corrections system to do is to secure and supervise the individuals cast out of society through the judicial process regardless of their individual needs and abilities. The purpose of this particular study is focused on the management of special needs inmates and the burdens incurred at various levels. For this study, special needs populations are defined as prisoners who exhibit unique physical, mental, social, and programmatic needs that distinguish them from other prisoners and to whom jail and prison management and staff have to respond in nontraditional and innovative ways (Schmalleger & Smykla 2013). The special needs populations included individuals suffering from mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse and dependency, the elderly, sufferers of chronic and communicable diseases, and physical disabilities.

The isolation of a human is inhumane for all; it has been determined to cause psychological stress and damage (). When mentally ill people are locked away in prison they often are unable to control themselves and their actions leading them to act out, get into fights and cause complications. When an inmate becomes unruly they are sent to solitary confinement. To put a mentally ill individual in solitary confinement is extraneously stressful and damaging. These are people who already have psychological instabilities and to cut them off from human contact stresses them out more and causes them growing anxiety and can escalate into deep depressions (). The mentally ill populations in prison are the most common offenders in solitary confinement due to the inability of prison staff to understand and control these people

Inmates have been placed here for both short and long term sentences. Segregation has a significant impact on inmates with preexisting mental illnesses. According to Arrigo and Bullock?s (2008) research, ?the extreme isolation that was characteristics of the early prisons?ultimately resulted in serious physical and psychological consequences for convicts.? The SHU has become the way prisons control troublesome inmates. Solitary inmates are only out of their cells for weekly showers and recreation time, but they are still heavily restrained. These inmates have no contact with the general population including dining and religious gatherings. This method of isolation leaves no remove for communication with other

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.

Another major factor is the lack of medical services in the prisons and jails. Many of the mentally ill are retained in the criminal justice system without the appropriate treatment needed because of the lack of trained staff in the mental illness field (Markowitz, 2011). There is usually limited access to treatment programs while incarcerated and a high risk of decomposition and deterioration (Rock, 2001). In a Frontline documentary on mental illness researchers estimated that about two thirds of the inmates in state facilities who did receive counseling or psychotropic drugs did not necessarily specialize in providing mental health services; leaving us to believe when the adequate treatment is being distributed is it being properly

Individuals suffering from mental illnesses tend to fall victim to the criminal justice system due to their uncontrollable actions that result from their mental illness symptoms. Within the United States two to three hundred thousand people in prison suffer from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, severe depression, and bipolar disorder. Sadly, the majority of prisons are deficient in providing the appropriate resources to treat these individuals; people with mental illnesses are too frequently socially mistreated, neglected, and misunderstood within the confines of a prison. Prisons are deficient in correctional staff trained to suit mentally ill inmates, in

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.

With states closing many of its mental facilities in the communities, there were a lot of people in need of outpatient care who fell through the cracks of the system and ended up in prison. Prison is where many of them died from inadequate treatment. Prisons were suddenly receiving inmates with the following types of mental illnesses: Schizophrenia, bipolar, and deep depressions. These prisons just did not provide these inmates with any medication during their incarceration. Because the community based health services is lacking, and patients aren’t receiving sufficient outpatient care, it makes the effectiveness of deinstitutionalization a serious problem. Without the availability of 24/7 psychiatric services that are well structured, I believe that deinstitutionalization is what is accounting for the increase of the mentally ill inmates in the correctional facility.

According to a 2006 Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that over half of the inmates in both prisons and in jails had a problem concerning their mental health (James & Glaze, 2006). The estimates in this report were separated by federal prisons, which contained 45 percent of inmates suffering from mental illness, 56 percent in state prisons, and

When there is a mentally ill prisoner, should they suffer? Solitary confinement does this to prisoners all Solitary confinement means isolating prisoners in a separate cell as a form of punishment, worsening the prisoner’s mental health around the world. Mentally ill inmates have many factors of poor treatment in prisons worsening their health rather than helping them. Solitary Confinement remains an ineffective method of punishment for prisoners causing prisoners mental distress, many different forms of neglect, leading them to suicide, and worsening their mental wellbeing.

One of the most controversial issues regarding the mentally ill and the prison system is the medical treatment received. According to the film, “16% of the prison population in the state of Ohio, which reflects a national average, are persons who have been diagnosed with mental illness.” Prisons began as an institution designed to rehabilitate, however, a vast majority of prisons throughout the country do not provide adequate medical care for their mentally ill inmates. However, the prisons that do possess adequate health care are most likely the first instance in which the inmates with mental illness have received any sort of treatment in their entire life. People with chronic mental illness need constant supervision which they cannot get outside of prison. Although inmates does not receive the most extensive treatment, the treatment they do receive is well beyond the treatment they would have received had they stayed out of the criminal justice system.

The statistics on this topic are very elusive, but we know that approximately twenty thousand inmates are in solitary confinement in America‘s supermax prison, and thousands upon thousands of others are held in isolation in other smaller prisons and jails. In the early 1800’s, a new style of prison rolled around. It was called the penitentiary (Eastern State) and the idea base of this facility was to hold prisoners in solitary and reform them, not to punish them. Back nearly two hundred years ago, this makes plenty of sense, but why is America stuck two hundred years in the past? Why are we putting the human mind in an environment where the entire foundation of the brain begins to lose all understanding? Solitary confinement is for both the safety of the prisoner, and as punishment when rules have been broken. If prisoners such as rapists and murderers are terrified of this small little cell does that not say something? An estimated 20% of all inmates in the nation‘s prison and jails are seriously mentally ill, and the use of a solitary confinement system only makes this worse. In the punishment of wrongdoing and of violence, prisoners are thrown into solitary without a second glance. When we take into understandings that people with severe mental illnesses do not always know right from wrong, they tend to be the high population of those in solitary confinements. Once thrown into this small cell, prisoners are looked at like next to nothing, they are treated terribly, having only one hour a day to be placed in an even smaller cage like contraption and see the outdoors. With conditions like these, one statistic that is most often published, seventy percent of solitary prisoners commit suicide. Twenty three hours a day, seven days a week for weeks and months on end, these prisoners

A major issue facing the prison system and society is the fact that prisons are not equipped to meet the needs of older prisoners and older prisoners are not adequately prepared to-renter society.

A common misconception that many people have about the United States prison system is that it acts as a sanctuary for rehabilitation, and it is this misconception that allows people to believe that mentally ill prisoners who are sent to prison will receive the treatment that they need. Not only does life in prison provide added stress and anxiety to the already burdensome life of living with a mental illness, but with so many inmates in such close quarters, said mentally ill patients often get harassed and are unlikely to get the amount of attention from doctors and specialists that they truly need. With such stated lack of necessary attention and treatment, mentally ill prisoners often develop more severe symptoms than those that they entered with. Therefore, the time, energy, and resources that funnel into caring for the 1.3 million inmates with mental illness who are currently in the United States prison system should be shifted to focus on medication and or rehabilitation in an appropriate

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.