Role Of Mental Illness In Prisons

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.

This paper explores the topic of mental health within prisons and how it affects the inmates. The report of my findings were through research of twelve articles, two credible website sources, and a published textbook.

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

Throughout the years, the United States criminal justice system has been constantly incarcerating individuals who endure from a severe mental illness. People who suffer from serious mental illness are doubtlessly to be discovered in prison. There is a significant amount of mentally ill offenders that are placed in the state and federal institutions. The mentally ill are overpopulating the prisons. The criminal justice system is a deficiency for those who can profit more from the help of mental health treatment center or psychiatric hospital by sending individuals to correctional facilities or prisons. Today’s jails and prisons are being labeled as the new mental health hospitals for the mentally ill offenders. Commonly in today’s society, it generally takes other individuals who are willing to educate and support the mentally ill person into becoming successful in life.

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.

This program is a transitional house for prisoners or clients released from a treatment facility. There has been several studies done on this subject and those studies and have shown that when treatment addresses the social environment the client has a better chance to stay drug and alcohol free. ZywaiK et al. (2002), found that clients with social environments with a higher quantity of people that in recovery, increased client outcomes. This result was persistent at the 3-year mark. Directors or counselors in treatment facilities often ask question about where their clients will live once they complete treatment. This question is asked often by experts who work with clients that are homeless or in high crime filled areas. These treatment

Gregg Barak (2007) pointed how American’s failing mental health care system has attributed the overrepresentation of the mentally ill in U.S jails “Because of the large-scale denationalization of mental health facilities in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of people struggling with mental illness on their own has risen over the past three decades, and social institutions have been less than responsive to their needs.” (Barak, 2007: 587) Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll (2013) drew attention to the overrepresentation of mentally ill offenders in U.S jails and prisons. “Approximately half of state and federal prison inmates and over 60 percent of jail inmates report having mental health problems or symptoms indicative of mental illness. The

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.

Hawthorne, W. B., Folsom, D. P., Sommerfeld, D. H., Lanouette, N. M., Lewis, M., Aarons, G. A., Jeste, D. V. (2012). Incarceration among adults who are in the public mental health system: Rates, risk factors, and short-term outcomes. Psychiatric Services, 63(1), 26-32. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.201000505

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.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will

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

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

Mental illness affects roughly 56 percent of state prison inmates and 64 percent of jail inmates. It is a disorder that interferes with mental cognition involving changed thinking, emotion, behavior, or a combination of both. Several things are thought to be correlated with mental illness among the incarcerated. Some examples include prior life stressors, gender differences, prison life environment, etc (Drapalski et al., 2009; Gosein, Stiffler, Frascoia, & Ford, 2015). In the present paper, the role mental illness plays in the life of incarcerated inmates is investigated. It is hypothesized that individuals diagnosed with a mental illness are more likely to be incarcerated than inmates without a mental

Mental sicknesses, like schizophrenia, brain diseases and other living conditions have affected many individuals in the United States from the past until now. Yet in the US, the institutions that usually treat people with these illnesses are not hospitals or psychiatric facilities, but rather jails and prisons. The United States have adopted a system that seems to incarcerate the mentally ill rather than treating them within help centers. “In 2012, there were roughly 356,268 inmates with severe mental illnesses in prisons and jails, while only 35,000 people with the same diseases were in state psychiatric hospitals.” Incarcerating the mentally ill in correctional facilities rather than treating them in health