Where Should They House The Criminally Insane?

In recent years, correctional facilities have begun to experience an influx of inmates who suffer with mental illness. Per Morgan, et al (2011), ?the United States has three times more individuals with severe mental illnesses in prisons than in psychiatric hospitals.? Most prisons in this country aren?t equipped to properly care for the mentally ill persons who enter the facility. Individuals with mental illness are more likely to be placed in prisons rather than a mental health institution to receive help to deal

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.

The incarceration of those who are mentally ill is on the continual rise. Many states juggle with the decision of placing offenders in Mental Hospital or locating them in State Prisons. Latessa and Holsinger (2011) discuss two major reasons for the increase of those with mental illness within the prison system. First, many states have no longer allow for the insanity plea during criminal trials, thus those who suffer from mental illness are not required to receive mandatory mental treatment. This is due to the discomforting idea that criminal offenders should not be given the same living conditions as those whom are patients of mental wards. Secondly, longer sentences have created a surplus of mentally ill offenders needing treatment. Soderstrom (2007) added that the lack of mental health support systems in

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

The shutdown of state mental hospitals and lack of available financial and institutional resources force mentally ill people to the United States Judicial System for mental health. Every year thousands of people are arrested for various crimes and they are sent to jail. Sixteen percent of these people have some type of mental health problem (Public Broadcasting System , 2001). When we consider that the United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million, this number is staggering (Anasseril E. Daniel, 2007). This is about 1% of the entire population of the United States. There are many reasons as to why the situation has taken such a bad turn and when the history of the treatment of mental illness is examined one can see how the situation developed into the inhumane disaster it is today.

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

Today, it seems almost incomprehensible that so many people with serious mental illnesses reside in prisons instead of receiving treatment. Over a century and a half ago, reform advocates like Dorothea Dix campaigned for prison reform, urging lawmakers to house the mentally ill in hospitals rather than in prisons. The efforts undertaken by Dix and other like-minded reformers were successful: from around 1870 to 1970, most of the United States’ mentally ill population was housed in hospitals rather than in prisons. Considering reformers made great strides in improving this situation over a century and a half ago. Granted, mental hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th century were often badly run and critically flawed, but rather than pushing for reform of these hospitals, many politicians lobbied for them to close their doors, switching instead to a community-based system for treating the mentally ill. Although deinstitutionalization was originally understood as a humane way to offer more suitable services to the mentally ill in community-based settings, some politicians seized upon it as a way to save money by shutting down institutions without providing any meaningful treatment alternatives. This callousness has created a one-way road to prison for massive numbers of impaired individuals and the inhumane warehousing of thousands of mentally ill people. Nevertheless, there are things that can be done to lower the rate mentally ill persons are being incarcerated. Such

One concern that is raised when deciding if the insanity defense should be abolished is will criminals with mental illness receive the treatment they need in a prison verse not being sentenced to a mental health facility. Indeed they will get treatment in a prison for their mental conditions as they would in a mental facility. The public sometimes falsely overestimate the punishment and rehabilitation in the American prison system. Prisons in America are held to some standards to make sure their prisoners are safe and getting the treatment they need as well as making sure they are in a safe environment. For example, in the Yates case, she was

Where should they house the criminally insane? Many civil and federal cases have had to deal with whether they should house the criminals in a mental institution;however, most of them end up in a state prison. Although housing them in mental institutions sounds more appealing significant funding goes into mental institutions, but most of the time there is not enough funding for all the criminals being convicted. The problem of where the criminals should be housed is a big problem in the field of law. Even though prosecutors have been dealing with this problem for several decades, it has not been solved which causes most problems for the lawyers dealing with cases that have a criminally insane

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.

Imagine, a sharp metal rod piercing through one's eye socket and scrambling the frontal lobe of the brain in order to cure “insanity.” That was one of the most common procedures for decades, resulting in risk of seizures and complete mental delusion. Insane asylums not only held patients captive in confined rooms for months on end, but would only be taken out to perform lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and other extremely painful methods to cure their disability. Psychiatric wards were an embarrassing and horrible part of history. The previous solution for curing mental illness was inhuman, because of the way patients were used as test subjects to experiment with mental health. Since the end of asylums, our understanding of the brain has

Jails have been described as “de facto mental hospitals” because they have filled the void created when state psychiatric hospitals began closing in the early 1960s through a process known as deinstitutionalization. Supporters of deinstitutionalization thought the process would help individuals suffering from a mental illness live more self-reliantly while being treated by community mental health programs. However, the federal government did not provide the necessary funding to meet the mounting demand for these programs, leaving numerous untreated. Individuals with serious mental illnesses are often poor or homeless and are likely to have substance abuse problems. Therefore, when they are left untreated, they are more likely to commit minor crimes that have been the focus of law enforcement in recent years (H. Richard Lamb and Linda Weinberger).

An American notion that has existed since the birth of our country is that our convict's are innocent until proven guilty, whereas the reverse occurs in other countries. The government then appoints a special form of criminal defense lawyer to the accused, a public defender. The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines a public defender as: “A lawyer who is paid by the government to defend people who are accused of a crime and are unable to pay for a private lawyer” (Merriam-Webster). While the performance of a public defender may appear elementary, protect and defend, the reality is that it is much more sophisticated. Usually, a public defender's job encompasses attending many court sessions and dealing with a variety of clients at once. The article titled “Criminal Lawyer Career” observes: “The primary role of a criminal lawyer is to represent their defendant in the criminal court system. This encompasses arraignments, pretrial hearings, settlement conferences, trails and sentence hearings…Typically, criminal lawyers are working on several cases at one time…” (“Criminal Lawyer Career”). Additionally, public defender's must gather evidence, consult with witnesses, and create arguments useful in court. All of these aspects contribute to the role of a public defender: protect and defend those who cannot

From a deontology standpoint, the criminal justice system have the obligation and duty to maintain a safer society and reduce crime rates, even though the offender may have mental abnormalities. Grachek state that the anti-therapeutic nature is flawed, it permitted the free will of the mentally ill, but did not take a step ahead to treat and transform them into productive humans (1496). Hence, I suggest that insane offenders should also be punished, they should be sentenced for imprisonment or social service along with a mandatory mental health treatment. There should also a stricter and more reliable testing procedure to validate the mental capability of the defendant. A uniform testing methodology can help to reduce the flaws brought by different testing, thus making it easier for juries to make accurate judgement (Grachek 1492). A more reliable insanity test can prevent cases of

A criminal defense lawyer is vital when a person commits a crime. There are so many criminal attorneys or lawyers today who work in their local courts. There are also attorneys who specialize in other cases. When a person commits a felony, a reputable lawyer can advise regarding the procedures and court proceedings. To be involved in a crime is a serious matter. In order to get through the case, one needs to get assistance from a criminal attorney lawyer.