Mental Illness In Jails

In that case, with the obstacles the police faces when dealing with mental illness situations, there are two serious issues appears from the current state of criminalization with someone having a mental illness and injury or death as a result of their contact with the police. As noted, officers are in the position to be first responders to serious mental health emergencies; police intervention accounts for a significant amount of referrals into care estimates of 15-40% of the mentally disordered is currently in jails and prisons (Adelman, 2003). Majority of arrest of mentally ill people are for non-serious crimes such as minor theft, noise or disruptions complaints, failure to appear in court following other charges that was either directly or indirectly related to their illness. A study by Rogers, suggest that lack of advance knowledge of mental illness was a contributing factor to arrest (1990). As a result, an arrest was often the only step available for officers in situation where individuals were not sufficiently disturbed too be accepted by hospitals but were too public in their deviance to be ignored. Police resorted to arrest in three type of situations: (1) when the individual was thought to be either unacceptable to the hospital, or when symptoms made did not meet the criteria in other carious caretaking systems, (2) when the public …show more content…
However, if police do use hospitalization the use of hospitals is limited by the number of psychiatric beds in the community and by the criteria for