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Mass incarceration of the mentally ill is insane...

Posted by ausername, 27 February 2015 · 1054 views

So, here comes another rant.

I work in law enforcement... and in a society where we don't make mental health a priority in heath care, we are going to see a lot of mentally ill people cycling through the criminal justice system. Mental health needs to be a priority, and the stigma surrounding those words needs to die. If people are ashamed to admit they have an illness, they are not likely to seek help for it.

I live in Oklahoma. We used to have homes, for lack of a more precise term, where people who had issues functioning independently, due to mental capacity or incapability, could live. People were put there by the state, voluntarily, or by friends or loved ones. Habitual criminal offenders with mental disorders were given a place to stay to keep them off the street and out of lifestyles that they would be taken advantage of in.
Due to budget issues, these places are no more. Funding for mental health programs have dried up. There are relatively few places in the state that provide shelter or counseling for the mentally ill for free or little cost. Those places are severely under staffed and in severe lack of resources. For example, a city of 550,000 people has a mental health screening and intake with only 20 beds available at any given time.
When the state shut down these facilities, there was no after care for those in their care. Unless a family member has the financial resources to get a private firm to care for their loved one, they were simply put on the street. There was a guise of a rehabilitation program, but it was a joke. A heavy number of those who benefited from the states programs found themselves homeless, wandering the streets, soliciting food and money from strangers, getting into trouble.
For example, I live and work in the downtown area of a large city... Almost all of the free/low cost services, such as the Salvation Army, Day Center for the Homeless, John 3:16 Mission, and several state funded social services, are located downtown. So naturally, there is a visible homeless population in downtown... There is a gas station chain that has taken the act of putting orders on the homeless for trespassing. They have documentation on these individuals that they do no make purchases, but they sleep in the bathrooms and solicit other paying patrons... One said homeless woman has been arrested at least 20 times in my two career in law enforcement for trespassing at ONE of these gas stations, and mind you, there is one on nearly every block. Each time she is booked in, she is released by a special program for the mentally ill... she doesn't pay fines, doesn't show up for court, gets a warrant... So next time she trespasses, she goes to jail on that and a warrant... It stacks. These charges never amount to a felony, just a series of misdemeanors and court costs, which being mentally ill and homeless, she will never pay.

This example is a clear problem with our system. We are treating mental illness like a crime in our culture. These people need help. They go to places that are warm to sleep. That is common sense. They go to places with heavy traffic to ask for help. This is also common sense. By putting those with mental illness into a jail setting, we are not coming close to addressing their needs, but merely providing them with a new set of problems that they are not mentally equipped to deal with.

Another huge problem I see with mental health and criminal activity - those individuals with severe mental disorders such as manic depressive, paranoid, schizophrenics - can not be housed with other inmates in an open, general population setting. The criminal justice system was not developed to treat mental illness, so often these mental disorders go without being diagnosed or they are untreated. In the event severe mental issues are detected in the criminal justice system, these individuals are usually isolated from contact with other offenders, and have minimal contact with staff... Common sense and history tells us that isolation and solitary confinement only exacerbates mental illness... These individuals become worse, causing more issues with staff, and usually get charges added on to their simple trespass, such as assault on an officer...
Simple charges turn into felonies because jails are not equipped and trained to handle the influx of mentally ill individuals being funnel through their doors.

It seems to me that my state could do a lot more to reduce the number of mentally ill individuals in jail and prison.
Some counties have a mental health court that puts those with mental illness on a different scale than those without - but this doesn't solve a problem, it just deals with the consequence of a problem with alternative measures. These people still remain mentally ill and untreated, and often times are released back into the same communities the offend in...
It usually seen that if these offenders can get some stability and a schedule for their medication - the can become productive members of society - we see this in jails where mentally unstable individuals are put on a time clock of medication administered by the jail - and slowly, their mental issues become less prominent...

The largest provider of mental health services in Oklahoma is the Department of Corrections - does no one else see the problem there?
If we could find a way to assist the mentally ill before they are incarcerated, I think we could most certainly prevent it.
We need more community based programs to help identify the need, and more funding towards mental health housing and rehabilitation in order to prevent these illnesses from consuming more lives...

I don't have the answers, yet again, but these are things I spend my time thinking about.
It is all a stream of consciousness ramble...



Yup, huge problem, good thoughts. 

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I've thought about these things a lot. The USA's got a lot of issues with incarceration, and the way mental illness is viewed is a huge part of it. You have already made the points I would, so I don't have much to say beyond agreeing that it's a problem

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Yea we definitely need more resources for mental illness. Not just money wise, but other forms as well. Hopefully the government will get some people who can put these resources to good use. I agree with your reasoning. It is really sad to see how people are treated when they need help. It is a tough problem to address because not everyone views people with mental illness as equal. 

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Thanks for the comments guys.

 

It just is sickening to me to see how some people are treated, and disgusting that it happens to them by my peers.

Thankfully there is now mandated training for law enforcement on dealing with mental health individuals, but that isn't even a dent in the problem. 

 

I feel like a lot of people don't understand that mental illness can be passed down genetically, or it can develop - and it affects people of all race, gender, and socioeconomic class - it is one of those things that you don't really see up close, and then when you do - it changes your life.

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