The relationship between mental health care accessibility and incarceration rates is an issue that has often been overlooked. According to Mental Health America, there are 1.2 million individuals that have a mental illness who are in prison each year. This means that more than half of Americans who are incarcerated have a mental illness. This number comes to be 3 times higher than the prevalence of mental illness in the general population. Studies have also found that the high amount of incarceration can be linked to minimal access of mental health care. With this being the case, there is urgency for policy members to formulate mandatory provisions in order to facilitate the ease through which one can have access to treatment within the criminal justice system. This policy is one that will have to be mandated by the national as well as state governments as prisons are under both of their jurisdictions.
The policy relevant issues that we are going to have to address are both political and financial. The biggest concern relating to the overrepresentation of mental illness in prisons is that as a result, prisons are becoming overpopulated. Overpopulation of prisons is on a rise in the United States, and as a result, the quality of a prison decreases as there is less focus on those who actually need correctional facilities in order to facilitate their transition to the real world after their served jail time. This causes even more psychological distress for the inmates, which then causes a type of positive feedback system in which mental health is never being steadily improved. The fact that mental health treatment for many upon being released from jail is stopped due to an inability to finance it is also one of the main causes for those with mental illnesses being reentered into prison multiple times throughout their lifetime. These correctional facilities are becoming more of a mental asylum as opposed to a place where individuals who are facing trouble with the law can go to help themselves.
Furthermore, the lack of resources dedicated towards mental illnesses in correctional facilities causes the misdiagnosis of the mental illness, which then leads to individuals with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder to be taken in without a sufficient treatment plan or the ability to stabilize their illness. Both police officers as well as prison guards also do not receive ample training to manage those people who have a mental illness. In order to promote a healthy environment for those with mental illnesses, everyone who is working in a prison or as a police officer should be aware as to how to handle these individuals, as there is a large problem currently with inmates being subjected to harsh and cruelty from workers at the correctional facilities. Without proper programs integrated into the correctional facilities system, those who are incarcerated as a result of an action that occurred due to their mental illness will not be given the proper help to change their lifestyle.
In a report that was conducted in 2012, there were approximately 300,000 inmates with severe mental illnesses in a prison, while only 30,000 were actually in a psychiatric hospital. Before the deinstitutionalization movement in the 1960s, these inmates would have been in a hospital. Unfortunately, there is now not enough room in these hospitals so those who have severe mental illnesses are often locked up for trivial offense, and left with inadequate treatment. Both physical and sexual abuse of these inmates leads to a sever decline to mental health. This problem exists all throughout the United States and even in territories such as the U.S. Virgin Islands. In fact, the conditions in these islands had gotten to such a bad point that their government was involved in a class-action lawsuit in which two correctional facilities were challenged for unconstitutional conditions against those with mental illnesses. Harmful conditions against those with mental illnesses are also extremely evident in the mainland United States. A study of 130 attempted suicides in a jail in Washington shows that there is a 77 percent chance that an inmate with a mental illness will attempt suicide during their time in the prison as opposed to a 15 percent throughout the rest of the population in the jail.
The average cost that a state has to pay to keep a mentally ill person in prison for a year costs around $23,000, which comes to around $63 per day. This is 20 times more than what crisis treatment and counseling for any person with a mental illness would be. In some areas of the United States the ratio could be as much 25:1. Allocating resources to reduce the prevalence of those with mental illness in the judicial system would allow us to direct that money into a much more beneficial way of helping those who are led in the incorrect direction as a result of their mental illnesses.
The landscape for this problem is mostly within prisons; both local as well as federa; prisons, but also outside of prisons as there is a need for continuity of treatment for released inmates outside of jail. It is considered a regulatory policy lever, as it needs to be put into place in order by government officials to maintain order and diminish the threat of danger to those with mental illnesses. The stakeholders for this policy range from tax-payers, from whose money the government will be able to fund the mandatory changes within the criminal justice system for the betterment of those who are mentally ill, to the inmates themselves who will notice a vast improvement in their quality of life. The main objective of this policy to provide adequate resources for those who face mental illnesses and either deter them towards treatment instead of jail for minor offenses, or allow proper treatment for those in prison so that they are able to successfully and healthily go through their jail time and avoid a relapse of jail time. The main end goal is to evade the situation that is currently in place in which prisons are treated as a warehouse where those who are mentally ill and dumped and left to become isolated from the outside world.
The main advocates for a policy to better this problem will be those who have been educated on the social implications and the consequences of mental illnesses. They would urge a renovation of the criminal justice system in order to minimize any additional suffering that the mentally ill have to endure when facing the law. Those who are not aware of the real dangers that come alongside mental illnesses would argue that they do not want to put their money towards bettering a “criminal†or someone who deserves to be behind the bars for the way the acted in society. As a result, a policy of this sort may not be instated with ease, as these types of people could pose as a barrier. The main downside of this policy would be the time that implementation would take. Incorporating a new system in jails that are already populated may pose as an obstacle to achieve such a change. Additionally, creating alternate treatment programs for those who face minor problems with the law will take an ample amount of time, as the government should also decide on a threshold for what constitutes as worthy of jail time and what can be sufficed with solely mental health treatment. This could also cause backlash from many taxpayers as they may not have the same vision for who should be incarcerated and who should not. However, in its entirety a policy towards enacting more availability for mental health treatment for those in the criminal justice system would benefit both those individuals with a chance for a better life, as well as the general public who are able to feel safer on a daily basis.