Jails and Prisons Are Becoming Separation Bins for the Mentally Ill

[fizzgig]

Last edited Sat Apr 12, 2014, 02:16 PM - Edit history (1)

The Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) released a report this week that indicated the rising number of mentally ill inmates in American correctional facilities. Jails and prisons currently hold more mentally ill people than state hospitals in America.

Vox reported on the published study and the study found that 356,268 inmates have a severe mental illness, and there has been a major push for deinstitutionalization since the 1950s. Deinstitutionalization is the movement to remove the mentally ill from long-stay mental facilities and place them into community-based treatment centers.

Forty-four states and Washington D.C. have correctional facilities that house more mentally ill people than each of those states’ largest mental health facility. The TAC report outlined many problems caused by housing mentally ill inmates:

from ring of fire

from the vox article



edit: forgot to say that i found this in good reads

[mopinko]

1. the cook county sheriff is trying very hard.

he has gotten things to where most folks who are in the jail can get treated. he says that the hard part is that in the county jail people can be there one day and gone the next. they try to release them with a referral and weeks worth of meds, but that is about all they can do right now.
they are adding drug treatment, and working to add halfway housing that has the necessary support.

he also has accepted just about any suggestion that has an funds attached for any kind of job training. they now have a flock of chickens.

[fizzgig]

2. the revolving door is such a big problem

we have very limited mh beds in my county and they shut down the detox/mh center in the next county over. i worked on a campaign a number of years ago for a small tax increase to build another facility, but it failed pretty miserably.