Thought the course of the semester we have discussed many interesting topics. We also had the opportunity to pick a book to read. I chose the book “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness” written by Pete Earley. Pete Early wrote about his experience with his bipolar ill son Mike and the criminal justice system. In this paper, I will analyze the mentally ill and the police and the mentally ill and prisons. I will also explore how the book could be used as supplemental material in this course. Most mentally ill individuals are non-violent and are most likely to be victims. Very rarely, you will see mentally ill individuals committing a crime. When they do commit a crime or have some sort of mental crisis, the first ones …show more content…
Most law enforcement agencies do not provide special training for officers on how to deal with mental health crisis. If they get any training, this is usually provided by police academy in a four-hour core training class. Police officers who have little training often believe that this population is violent. Therefore, people with mental illnesses are 50 to 67% more likely than those without the illnesses to be arrested (Slate, Buffington-Vollum & Johnson, 2013, p.188). The Earley book talks about one of Mike’s incidents when he breaks into a nearby house and decides to take a bath. The police officers were on edge during this situation. Before making this arrest for the burglary, two sheriff deputies had been shot by someone who was mentally ill. There were five officers that wrestled Mike into handcuffs (Earley, 2006, p.21). If police officers are not exposed to mental health training, this usually contributes to the criminalization of the mentally ill, because the officers don’t understand their …show more content…
Because many police officers find that the mental health system is not helpful, they often simply arrest the mentally ill individual and send that person to jail or prison. In prison, the life of that mentally ill individual does not get any better. Like regular police officers, correctional officers do not get any training on how to deal with mental ill individuals. In some prisons, they do not have a professional psychiatrist to help the mentally ill inmates. Meanwhile the prison guards do not have enough training. Mentally ill prisoners are not getting the help they need. Most of the time inmates are being diagnosed and given the wrong medicine. The criminal justice system needs to do something about
As criminal rates rise, it has become a known fact that the mentally ill people are much more likely to go to jail. With all these mentally ill in prison, the United States has had to adapt their system. The question is whether or not they have done a good job of treating the mentally ill in prison. Punishing criminals has been around for thousands of years. As forensics technology improves and the population increases more and more people are going to jail.
In the chapter named “Mitigation”, Stevenson focused solely on the treatment of individuals with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system. In many instances, prosecutors and judges neglected to consider mental and intellectual disabilities when
As stated in Chapter 8, “Police officers exercise great discretion in handling the mentally ill.” If I was an officer, I wouldn’t want to use force on a homeless or mentally ill person unless I absolutely have to and if they have a weapon or are behaving in an aggressive manner. “Mentally ill persons are also much more likely to be the victims of crime and, therefore, are more likely to come to the attention of the police.” Serial killers choose their victims before they kill them and mentally ill people can be an easy target for serial
Earley puts a face and a personal twist on the experience and trauma that is mental illness. Earley documents how one of the Country’s largest prison has only one goal for their mentally ill prisoners: that they don’t kill themselves. The Miami-Dade County Jail has no specialized facilities for the mentally
During treatment, the criminally insane are cared for by nurses, psychiatrists and other hospital administrators. For the treatments to be effective, the hospital staff must adapt to the way of life in the psychiatric hospital. In the article “Inside a hospital for the criminally insane” by Caitlin Dickson, posted on The Daily Beast, Dickson shares her readings of a book written by Dr. Stephen Seager about the inside of the Napa State Hospital. Napa State Hospital is home to approximately 12,000 patients and a majority of the patients are rapists, killers and mass murderers (TheDailyBeast). Everyday the hospital staff endures violence and personalities of the patients.
9, pg. 229). The article I summarized claims that even though there has been a mighty change in the system it was not designed to meet the complicated needs of mentally ill inmates in their care (The New York Times Editorial Board). Both the article and the textbook state the needs of the mentally ill inmates are difficult and expensive and their needs are not always met. The text claims the correctional officers have other needs and the article says the system needs further improvement to fully meet the needs of the mentally ill. It would seem that regardless of if it is a systematic issue that needs to be resolved or a change that needs to happen on a personnel level, both sources clearly state there needs to be changes in effect in order to house these types of inmates properly and
I. Problem Failure to provide successful treatment alternatives to the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and the unequal opportunity to receive proper mental health care treatment in the U.S has resulted in the overrepresentation of the mentally ill in U.S jails and prisons. Mental health courts have shown they reduce recidivism, long term treatment plans over incarceration, as sentenced by traditional criminal courts is a clear step in the right direction. (National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2008)The expansion and creation of more mental health courts in necessary. However, there is need for improvements in the innovation to better serve their clients ethically and effectively. II.
It seems American media has tried to justify many mass shootings, to mental health. It is in the way our society ties these connections that it shows not only our politics, biases, and blind spots but also what it does for those troubled individuals, that acts alone (Metzl, "Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms"). It is hard to turn on a news and not hear about the topic of guns, with multiple mass shooting and the push for gun control, mental health is frivolously thrown around for political gain. When people associate extreme violence with mental health and read about murder trials defendants "not guilty by reason of insanity” it is understandable people do not want to be associated with this image. It
About 29 percent of the mentally ill incarcerated in 1992 were held with no charges against them. They were waiting for a bed at a hospital, psychiatric evaluation or transportation to some kind of psychiatric hospital. The mentally ill do not have adequate access to mental health services in jails; about 1 in 5. A lot of the mentally ill are arrested for misdemeanors. The mentally ill are also incarcerated for less serious charges than those who do not have a mental illness.
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.
Many individuals lack the understanding and awareness of mental illness and this can be very dangerous, especially when making decisions in regard to criminal behaviour. In some instances, the judicial system's failure to recognise the causal link between psychopathy and criminal behaviour can result in systemic failures. People who understand the struggle, difficulties, and functions linked with mental illness can better understand how it can affect one’s actions. People who have a better knowledge of the topic of mental illness will also be more understanding of the Insanity plea. Some people will be able to understand that the insanity plea does not necessarily let the criminal off with no punishment.
Introduction The views over the mentally ill and their relationship to violence are negative to the public eye. The mentally ill are looked down upon the general audience causing the mentally ill to become its own stereotype. Although, the public eye may view the mentally ill as violent researchers have found nothing but the truth. The research actually does show a correlation between the two but has a few reasoning’s behind the numbers of violence seen in the mentally ill.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, considers the qualities in which society determines sanity. The label of insanity is given when someone is different from the perceived norm. Conversely, a person is perceived as sane when their behavior is consistent with the beliefs of the majority. Although the characters of this novel are patients of a mental institution, they all show qualities of sanity. The book is narrated by Chief Brodmen, an observant chronic psychiatric patient, who many believe to be deaf and dumb.
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
Psychologists have been working within correctional facilities since 1955 and it is a forever evolving aspect of prison life. (Anon., 2010) A Correctional Psychologist’s Involvement in Prison Life A huge part of correctional psychology is working with offenders to ensure the safety of other prisoners and those that work in such facilities. (Anon., 2016) (Corriea, 2001)