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Mentally Ill In The Criminal Justice System Essay

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Mentally Ill in the Criminal Justice System The warehousing of mentally ill patients with in the justice system has recently began to receive a great deal of attention from concerned media centers and citizens of the aforementioned justice system. As many people know, there are a variety of different types of personalities within any penitentiary or prison. The warehousing of mentally ill patients just contributes to the list more. It has become more inhumane to house the mentally ill patients throughout the criminal justice system due to solitary confinement (Reutter). The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) has recently been documented on how they “house” their prisoners that suffer from a severe mental illness. According to the …show more content…

Certain federal government organizations such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and Medicare and Medicaid coverage have spent a total of 111.4 trillion dollars in support of the mental health programs with in the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and at most, 386 billion dollars on block grants with in each of the 50 states. Among the annual funds that are put into the justice system for mental health care plans, the more serious discussion is among the manifest of not having enough “community based” health care facilities for the mentally ill. “These people don’t think there’s anything wrong with them and these are disproportionately the ones who end up committing felonies or misdemeanors, ending up in jail or prison or even ending up homeless” – E. Fuller Torrey. According to a survey that was published by the US and District of Columbia, forty four out of the fifty states had been housing double the number of mentally ill patients than the state’s largest remaining psychiatric hospital. Although there were exceptions, only six states made the list: Kansas, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington State, and Wyoming (The Fiscal

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