Article on the Inside Criminal Justice website today highlighted the huge problem of the mentally ill getting caught up in the criminal justice system and prisons becoming de facto mental hospitals, which they are not equipped to be.
I've found this in my own research in the Bronx. While mental illness manifests in about 5% of the general population, nearly 20% of those who come through our doors in the Bronx for misdemeanor offenses are found to flag for possible mental illness. And that is just for those who don't present severe problems that would land them in the Mental Health Court. Many of them are also frequent offenders. Sometimes, jail or prison is the only place stable enough for people to get consistent care, but those places aren't equipped to handle the volume of mental illness they do see, and the real struggle is what happens to people after they leave. In addition, as pointed out by the article, solitary confinement and the jail environment often exacerbates already existing mental problems. A big, tough issue that we really need to address and i'm not sure how.
I've found this in my own research in the Bronx. While mental illness manifests in about 5% of the general population, nearly 20% of those who come through our doors in the Bronx for misdemeanor offenses are found to flag for possible mental illness. And that is just for those who don't present severe problems that would land them in the Mental Health Court. Many of them are also frequent offenders. Sometimes, jail or prison is the only place stable enough for people to get consistent care, but those places aren't equipped to handle the volume of mental illness they do see, and the real struggle is what happens to people after they leave. In addition, as pointed out by the article, solitary confinement and the jail environment often exacerbates already existing mental problems. A big, tough issue that we really need to address and i'm not sure how.
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