One in 100 United States adults are incarcerated. The United States has the highest record of incarcerated inmates, locking inmates up to eight times the amount of Canada and Europe. Prisons in America are so overcrowded, 95% percent of inmates are released, often bringing the violence back into society (Chamberlin). In the United States prisons and jails now holding 2.4 million inmates roughly - the highest incarceration rate of any free country (Petersilia). When the inmates are released and they have no jobs they have nowhere to go so this is a big factor in repeat offenders, but those who go through intensive drug treatment programs in prison are less likely to relapse outside of it.…
It is an estimated 50 percent of convicts in United States prisons are suffering from one or more mental illnesses. Many…
“Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation” ~Coretta Scott King. This might be true for some people, but some people might disagree. For the people that disagree think that if we all stay peaceful we can all stay the way things are or even better. In my opinion people should stay free permanently because people should have to fight for something they have already earned many years ago.…
ed mental health spending in 2015, compared to 36 in 2013 and 29 in 2014 (Sun, 2015). As stated previously, all of the funding that is being slashed from state mental health budgets is being spent on state prisons and the incarceration system. While mental institutions and prisons have similarities on paper, they are also fundamentally different in the goal they are trying to accomplish. Prisons should be for the rehabilitation of those who break the law, and it should serve as a way to help transition the convicts within back into society without future problems.…
As of today the United States has a total of 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 942 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. Territories. Overcrowding prisons and not enough staff are becoming a serious issue in America. Everyday more citizens are committing crimes that lead them in either prison or jails. And overcrowding prisons lead to having four to five inmates to a cell, which being that close to other criminals can cause violent behavior. It can also cause lack of privacy, which can cause mental health problems and possibly even increase suicide rates and self-harm.…
I think that epically in the most famous cases, like Andrea Yeates, they use a “mental disorder or defect” to excuse the horrible crimes they have committed. Spending their lives in a hospital as opposed to a prison where they belong is letting them off easy. It seems like every day there are stories in the news about people doing the unthinkable and claiming that they aren’t mentally healthy…
Our prisons are expanding each year rather than the mental health hospital that would treat mentally ill people. Lack of proper care and treatment, lack of social support pushes mentally ill into the prison system. Other than the shortage of psychiatric beds, mentally ill individuals enter the criminal justice system due to lack of interaction between them and law enforcement persons. When mentally ill is not manageable we place them into the prison. Moreover, the jails are to protect the society.…
The Frontline video documentary, “The Released,” is a follow-up film of Frontline’s “The New Asylum” which is a documentary about how correctional facilities became a dumping ground for our society’s mentally ill criminals after state psychiatric hospitals closed down in the 1970’s. The movie, “The Released” however, focuses on what happens to people with chronic mental health issues after being released from prisons and jails. The film shows us that most of these mentally ill inmates end up repeating the same cycles that ultimately result in a life-time of recidivism. The conclusion of “The Released” clearly conveys that deinstitutionalization and our mental health system currently in place is a failure.…
Prison Within the Mind Just within the years 2003 and 2015, the incarceration rates for the mentally ill have tremendously increased, that within a survey done on inmates it was found that “more than three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals”,(Carroll). The percentage rate has enormously increased, yet the mental health treatments in prison have not changed in the last two decades, (Carroll). There is a need for change in such situations, as a result, that out of all the inmates with mental illnesses, 83% were denied access to proper treatment, (Jailing People With Mental Illnesses). With millions of people being incarcerated each year and as society becomes more exposed to mental illnesses, there…
The difference being the inmates punishment could go on for months at a time, and without proper medication and treatment the misbehaved inmate can not begin their own recovery or for that matter, see a future ahead, other than a lonesome 4X8 jail cell. According to Henry J Steadman research author of “Prevalence of Serious Mental Illness Among Jail Inmates”, jail inmates have a higher rate of mental illness. Women are 6X more likely and men are 4.5X more likely to suffer from a serious mental illness than the general population (qtd. in Glazer 244).…
Mental illness in prisoners is an essential focus for reforming prisoners so that they can go into society. When prisoners are left to deal with their…
“Today, over 50 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States have a diagnosed mental illness, a rate nearly five times greater than that of the general adult population” (188). Prisons are not equipped with doctors, physiatrists or medications for the treatment and care these people need, an issue usually followed with violent reactions from poorly coping mentally ill. The cruel incarceration of the mentally ill decreases their ability to recover from the trauma they have survived and increases their mental instability and should, upon diagnosis, be placed into hospitals instead. Prisons were made to reform and help our most troubled citizens, but these people aren't given the chance they deserve due to their handicaps. These disabilities may not define them but they are defining their success when we purposefully ignore them.…
For those prisoners that already have some sort of mental illness before being sentenced to solitary confinement, their signs and symptoms worsen. For years, clinicians have been stating that placing inmates with serious mental conditions in solitary confinement is pointless. Many it's time we finally listened to them. This also results in a terrible cycle where mentally troubled inmates enter solitary confinement, build up anger as a result of their isolation, and then eventually lash out, causing them to receive an extended solitary confinement sentence.…
Prison Overcrowding Name: Sepehr Sadrameli Instructor: Dr.Dionne Peniston Course: Courts Systems & Practices Fall 2016 Identification of the problem Prison overcrowding is a common problem in different countries throughout the world including the United States. It refers to a phenomenon that occurs when demand for prison spaces in a particular jurisdiction exceeds the capacity of the institutions (Hough, Allen & Solomon, 2008). Prison overcrowding occurs when courts in a country when the rate of incarceration exceeds the rate at which the justice system releases prisoners, or the prisoners die thus freeing up space for new entrants.…
In the last 40 years, incarceration in the United States has reached epidemic proportions. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world; we hold 5% of the world’s population, but house 25% of the world’s prisoners (Kelly 2015). The use of incarceration has gradually become a more acceptable and more used form of punishment. As a result, our prison population is overflowing with offenders ranging from petty theft criminals to violent offenders. As cited in the textbook, purposes of our justice system should be retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation, (Clear, Reisig, & Cole 2016, p.72-73) but we focus far too much on punishment first and rehabilitation second, if ever.…