Pete Earley

The need for more prisons is not really a need. I am not in favor of the there being more prisons built in this world. Serving time in prison is supposed to be as unpleasant as possible. I am also not in favor of prisoners being mistreated by other inmates and or facility staff members. There are prison guards that often beat inmates and rape female inmates. These issues are also widely ignored. Here is California, we have one of the 10 worst prisons in America. Speaking of Pelican Bay State Prison. This prison located in Crescent City, California, has 3500 inmates. Out of the 3500 prisoners, 1500 of them are in solitary. Of that 1500 in solitary, 500 of them have been in solitary in excess of a decade. Are we sure, building more

Another issue that the American prison systems were facing was their constant practice of locking away mentally ill individuals to very long prison sentences that only seriously worsened their conditions, and even made their chances of overcoming mental illness, nearly impossible. Even medications that were prescribed to these individuals made them suffer serious and sometimes even worse, side effects. Although some states banned the high rates of mentally ill individuals to prisons, this only meant they were more targeted and thrown in jail for petty offenses by police. Many prisons do not have the resources, nor the skills needed to adequately and appropriately care for the mentally ill, therefore many of them suffer and even die from this

This week’s text revealed that offenders spending more than six years in a supermax prison, will suffer from mental illness. Long term solitary confinement promotes anger, confusion, and depression within inmates (Schmalleger & Smykia, 2015). Nevertheless, there are no studies that support the claim of confinement causing mental illness. If a person causes harm to any innocent victim for any reason and is convicted of the heinous crime(s) he or she should be sentenced

Internal pain, external pain, suicidal thoughts, drugs, and societal pressures, Craig Gilner experiences it all. Craig is a 15 year old boy from Brooklyn, New York, who lives with his family. One night when he plans to kill himself, he calls the suicide hotline, and they tell him to go to the nearest hospital and he does. Behind the doors, a huge world of experience and recovery awaits him. In the “short-term facility for adult psychiatric”(Vizzini 185), Craig meets new patients and works with others to heal himself. In It’s Kind of a Funny Story, the author, Ned Vizzini, illustrates Craig's journey and development as a character, as well as introduces Muqtada and Noelle, two other patients in the ward, who also develop and recover. However, it eventually gets better for everyone no matter who you are, but for some people it takes longer.

According to American Friends Service Committee, “numerous studies have documented the harmful psychological effects of long-term solitary confinement, which can produce debilitating symptoms and result in an increased risk of suicide and the effects are magnified for two particularly vulnerable populations: juveniles, whose brains are still developing, and people with mental health issues...” (2017). My topic of discussion deals with the injustice of social isolation in our prison system and the effects on an individual 's mental health. Kalief Browder a fairly normal adolescent residing Bronx, NY. Kalief endured false imprisonment at the age of sixteen; he spent three years and 800 days of those years were served in solitary confinement.

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

In the book Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen, one of the biggest focal points is mental illness. Mental illness can be tough to talk about, simply because the phrase “mental illness” encompasses such a wide range of conditions and conjures up images of deranged people, but it is very important, especially in this book. There is a certain stigma that people who are put into mental hospitals because they have medical problems or are insane and a possible danger to society. While this is sometimes true, it is far more common for patients to need help for a disorder, but just don’t know where to go or what to do, and can end up putting themselves or someone else in danger.

Summary: The prison reform movement was a generally successful movement led by Dorothea Dix in the mid-1800’s. This movement sought to reform the poor conditions of prisons and establish separate hospitals for the mentally insane. In this article written by Dorothea Dix, directly addresses the general assembly of North Carolina, she explains the lack of care for the mentally insane and the necessary care for them. In the section regarding the jails, she talks about how the insane are locked up because they pose of a threat to the public’s safety not confined somewhere. Also, they are stationed in small cells chained up which is torturing them, and only the rich can afford to be sent to hospitals where they take much better care of. Next, Dorothea Dix addresses the responsibility many families take on my keeping insane family members at home to help them from being mistreated in jails. This causes families to spend all of their time watching after a family member when they don’t even know how to properly treat them. Lastly, she explains the treatment necessary for the insane and the

Throughout human history, humans have been known to execute gruesome acts. Whether these acts are small and insignificant or massive and change history, humans are capable of performing horrific plots against one another. To make matters worse, most of the people who commit these terrible crimes are people who are entirely in a clear state of mind. Nevertheless, there are some cases in which the line between sanity and mental instability blurs. For example, there is an ongoing debate regarding the mental health of the main character in William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily.” Throughout the story, the main character, Miss Emily Grierson, shows signs of what appears to be some form of mental illness. Although Faulkner never states that Miss Emily has anything wrong with her mental health, he does provide enough evidence to support that she is not psychologically stable.

In today’s day and age, a person does not get put to death for just any crime. A recurring argument against the death penalty is that sentencing a defendant to death violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition. The Eighth Amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishment. Mental illness is expressly recognized as a mitigating factor in most death penalty statutes. The Supreme Court came to the conclusion in the case of Ford vs. Wainwright that the use of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to execute a person whose mental state renders understanding of capital punishment is impossible. Yet, there is a significant proportion of death row inmates are mentally ill and the research evidence found suggests that mental illness is often, in fact, an aggravating factor as far as capital sentencing bodies are concerned. The Supreme Court eventually came to the conclusion of this: “If it is cruel and unusual punishment to hold convicted criminals in unsafe conditions, it must be unconstitutional to confine the involuntarily committed - who may not be punished at all - in unsafe conditions” (French, 2005) There are rights that each individual has, and there needs to be guidelines to make sure each person is treated fairly, even if they do not deserve such

Today there are more mentally ill people in prisons and jails in the United States than any hospital or psych facility in this country. Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois is the largest mental health institution in the country. When a mentally ill person gets arrested for a violent crime they stay three to four times longer than a regular violent offender. “One third of those incarnated in cook county jail suffers from psychological disorders.” According to a 2006 Justice Department study, more than half of prisoners in the United States Suffer from some sort of mental health problem. The study also says that among female inmates one third of them have some type of mental disorder. In prisons and jails, prisoners sit in their cells majority

Mentally ill offenders comprise a huge segment of the country 's prison populace, bringing about various difficulties to correctional administrators who lack formal preparation or instruction on the best way to communicate, look after, and secure this specific populace (Pittaro, 2017). Correctional administrators confront a large group of difficulties with regards to mentally ill inmates. These particular inmates require more supervision and more care with respect to their prosperity in the correctional facility that they reside in. In most facility, the mentally ill prisoners are restricted to the minimum about of counseling services which may prompt troublesome practices. As indicated by an article written by Lloyd I. Sederer, M.D., "All patients have both a right to treatment and a right to refuse treatment (Sederer, n.d).” Despite the fact that being imprisoned can be difficult for the most advantageous individual, it 's harder for an individual diagnosed with an acute psychiatric illness. Correctional administrators have to battle with the idea of giving more supervision, specific mental care, and prescriptions that are not generally available to help with their conduct and other

In the book Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson gives a glimpse of the cruel, unjust sentencing practices problems we have with our justice system. Our prisons are flooded with inmates who suffer from a mental illness and with correction officers who are not properly trained to handle inmates who suffer from this hidden illness. Currently, there is no humane solution to for them to receive the help they need. Finding a

I did not realize how much of a problem those individuals have when it comes to the criminal justice system. The information is very important to the criminal justice system. When looking into the police enforcement, prison system, the court system and even the safety of the community knowing and understanding the basic information with serious mental illness people is very important. The author provides a lot of information in this chapter. The author covers a lot of different aspects when it deals with the serious mentally ill. The author provides evidence from different studies completed throughout the years. The author’s arguments and basic assumptions are valid. With the large amount of information provided in the chapter it bakes and valid the authors assumptions and arguments. The author’s argument did not have to persuade me. It did however give me more information to believe the system and policy dealing with mental illness individuals is flawed. I do not currently have any counter arguments with this chapter. The strengths of the article provide a lot of information to support that the system is flawed. I was surprised about how the victims are to be treated. It surprised me because you always hear about how inmates used to be treated, but not a lot of information on how the inmates with mental illness were treated. There are a lot of implications for this policy. First off there needs to be more resources available for those with serious mental illness. Resources would include programs to help those with serious mental illness be able to have access to their medications. Second, there needs to be more mental health facility that house those with mental illness who have committed crimes. Even though some prisons have certain areas for those with serious mental illness, there needs to be just a facility that

& Morgan, R.D. (2010). A National Survey of Mental Health Services Available to Offenders with Mental Illness: Who Is Doing What? Law and Human Behavior, 35:351–363.