Mentally ill prisoners in prison should be well taken care of. These offender need more care than those without a mental illness due to the illness they have they could hurting innocents civilian and guards or other prisoners like themselves or even themselves. Mentally ill offender need more medicines, Improve conditions, and the cost to keep them. Medicines Mentally ill offenders need as much more medicine than inmates without a mental illness, Therefore without these medicines it will be much difficult to release them to the hand of society. Medical cost: As the population of the prisons keep growing the more expensive the medical finances with cost. As with drug and metal offenders are in prison you will need to take care of them with medicines to help them out. As stated before these offender with “special needs” need more attention than other inmates or offenders. The Mental illness: These offenders suffer from a wide variety of mental illness from depression …show more content…
Offenders with these disorders could be dangerous to other or even themselves.The offenders with disorders like those stated before are close to being released back into society which must be frightening if they do not take their medicines. 2 Improve conditions Mental offenders are thrown in a correctional facilities due their crimes, but these offenders should be in a prison or a correctional facility where they do not get the help they need. When in a prison some of these offender could be and will be picked on like a schoolyard which might led to a suicide attempt. A report on mental offender in california have reported that over 30,000 prisoners confined in the state prison. The cost to keep them: Mentally ill prisoners cost to keep these prisoner in check or healthy is very costly. The cost of the medicine and Therapies are too expensive to keep. Conclusion Mentally ill offenders should not be in prisons but in mental hospitals were they would get the help they
More people get incarcerated for non-violent crimes and crimes caused by mental illnesses or drug abuse (Webb, 2009) and because these people get put in regular prisons, instead of in mental health facilities or facilities to help against drug addiction, where they could be treated to further prevent crimes driven by their illness (Webb, 2009), the prisons get overfilled and cannot hold the more ‘important’ prisoners that needed to be locked away from the public. A strong link of the criminal justice process is that the system tries to keep it fair for everyone. Every defendant has the right to an attorney so they can be defended properly and fairly and “Only judges who are adequately informed about a case can effectively control the proceedings and examine evidence” (Tochilovsky, 2002) It is also important for the criminal justice system that those involved show discretion and although this is not always the case, discretion by the judges, police, etc.
Those who are in a mental institution program should be taken seriously and not be treated as if they were invisible. People usually do not get the help they need because they do not know where to start and the job of the nurses and doctors are to take care of them. A mental illness does not go away on its own, it is something that the person has to work on even if it is a long process, the progress will be made. People are terrified of what will happen to them or what others think of them, which means everyone needs to make them feel comfortable or else their journey to getting the cure will not be overcomed. People cannot accept their serious illness, but doctors should be able to accept helping them out and supporting them.
In accordance to the National Comorbidity Study negative risk factors that aide towards mental illness are low income, little education, and no occupation. Given these risks an individual is almost three times more likely to have a psychiatric disorder. Socioeconomic status regarding race, gender all play a prominent role. There are disparities that exist for released mental health inmates especially for minorities, they experience a great disadvantage of finding employment due to a criminal record and mental health status. To add mental health former inmates strive to survive however, given two weeks of medication, faced with poverty, and no other available resources as a consequence re-enter the prison system.
Why the prison system is flawed The american prison system is flawed and should be changed because it is very expensive to keep it running the way it is, the prison system is helping gangs grow and it can be fixed it is possible. I believe that it needs to change so that cities will have more tax money to fix other things and the people who don't deserve to get released won't be. The prison system is very expensive for taxpayers because they have to pay to employ the officers, they have to pay for the building, the tools, the food for them to eat, there clothing and bedding.
There are also cost to the communities, people with untreated MH issues end up in hospitals, shelters or jail. “In 2011, there were about 240,000 seriously mentally ill people in prisons and 125,000 in jails, an additional 770,000 seriously mentally ill are on probation or parole. There are now more than ten times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in state hospitals” (mentalillnesspolicy.org).
America is a nation freeing its self from the shackles of the past . This is evident during the mid 19th century with reform movements happening in the Temperance, Education, Prison, women’s rights, and anti-slavery. Temperance, also known as Prohibition, is the fight against Alcohol. Americans were extraordinary heavy drinkers. In the 1820s it was estimated that per capita, consumption was 4 gallons of two-hundred proof per year (Larkin.
He says that the inmates should be treated like patients rather than inmates. And also while in cook county jail the inmate receive the help that they need. He says he problem is when a mentally ill person gets releases without their meds and treatment and support the usually end up back in jail and this becomes a repeated cycle. Ironically by Illinois cutting their mental health funding it only costed them more money. The state saw a 131 million dollar increase in spending for mental health.
The major problem we have today is that prisons shouldn't deal with taking care of the mentally ill, that's the mental hospital facilities job. The people that work in this type of setting need to be patient with the mentally ill. Its not easy to deal with people that are mentally ill, they require so much attention. Putting mentally ill people in a prison is the worst thing to do, it makes their mental illness worse due to being in isolation.
There are so many mentally ill people in correctional facilities because most families do not know how to help their loves ones who suffer from a mental illness, so the call the police for help. Majority of the police officers do not know what to do or how to handle people with a mental illness disease. Police officers who are not trained to deal with the mentally ill often do not recognize that person is ill. Some police officers do not recognize if the individual should or not go to jail or a treatment center or medical facility. The impact of law enforcement and the judicial system dealing with people with a mental illness is to assist the inmates with the help they need.
Prisons’ general health services should include regular assessment for prisoners,
In my opinion, I think it depends on the situation. The people that have a mental illness, which caused them to comit the crime, would be better off than if he or she went to prison. In other words, if that person had little to no contol of their actions, due to the mental illness, then they would be better off getting treated. On the other hand, the people that had control of their actions, and blame it on a mental illness should be convicted.
The shift is attributed to the unexpected clinical needs of this new outpatient population, the inability of community mental health centers to meet these needs, and the changes in mental health laws (Pollack & Feldman, 2003). Thousands of mentally ill people flowing in and out of the nation 's jails and prisons. In many cases, it has placed the mentally ill right back where they started locked up in facilities, but these jail and prison facilities are ill-equipped to properly treat and help them. In 2006 the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that there were; 705,600 mentally ill inmates in state prisons, 78,000 in federal prisons, and
However, they do not receive the mental help they need to understand why they did it and to help them to not do it again. Serial killers are reprimanded but do not get the mental assistance they need to help them with this illness. A drug addict that has been arrested multiple times for acting upon the effects of the drugs they are on so they receive jail time. Drug addicts don 't need jail they need rehabilitation to help with their addiction.
There are more people incarcerated who have a mental illness that there are in psychiatric hospitals. (Psychology Today). Mental Health America reports that “there are more than 1.2 million people currently residing in prisons and/or jails with a mental health condition and lack of access to mental health care”. (MHA). 40% of adults with a serious mental illness will be arrested at some point in their lifetime, usually for disturbing the peace or for a petty crime which are caused by their mental illness.
However, the construction of new prison facilities has not provided a sustainable solution for the reduction in crime rates in the society. Incarceration has also proven to be expensive. There are several costs associated with incarceration. These include costs of building new facilities, costs of paying prison staff, maintaining the prisons and costs of treating particular classes of prisoners such as elderly and mentally ill inmates. The United States spends billions of dollars on incarceration each year with the average yearly increase in state spending on prisons from 1999 to 2009 being approximately 3 percent (James, 2011, p.632).