🇺🇸 Mental Illness in America's Prisons | Fault Lines
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Published 2009-12-07
Homelessness has become a part of the landscape of every major city and town in the US, but it is often more than poverty that is to blame for the plight of the homeless.
While there are no exact figures, advocacy groups estimate that as many as 80 per cent of homeless people suffer from mental illness.
For many, this sad reality eventually leads to confrontations with the law, which explains how the mentally ill have come to make up more than half of the US prison population.
Houston in Texas has one of the nation's largest homeless populations. Incidents across the country in which police officers have shot and killed mentally ill individuals have forced law enforcement officials here to re-think their approach.
"As the years passed, we decided to take advantage of the resources of the mental health community," Chief Harold Hurrt of the Houston police says.
"And now, we are much more professional in our response in that we realise that jail is not the answer."
Houston is home to the nation's largest Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) unit. The programme partners police officers with mental health clinicians who attempt to allow distressed mentally ill individuals to recover in hospitals rather than detention facilities.
However, public hospitals are under-funded and over-crowded, meaning that if they offer any psychiatric services at all, it is only for the short term.
Psychiatrists say jail is not an ideal environment to treat inmates. Meanwhile, long-term stay facilities have all but disappeared throughout the US.
Fewer than 40,000 Americans currently reside in psychiatric hospitals, while according to the Department of Justice, 30 times that number - 1.25 million mentally ill people - are serving time in US prisons.
In a special report, Fault Lines' Josh Rushing visited detention facilities in Texas to discover how inmates with mental illness are treated.
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All Comments (21)
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As someone myself who has suffered from mental illnesses for a very long time this makes me very sad I pray for change
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Many of our nation's mentally ill will not even seek help, because they are in fear of how they will actually be treated. They should be helped, not punished or tortured. This breaks my heart.
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Complete reform is necessary here in the United States (US). As a Master's Forensic Psychology major, I have an opinion about the mentality of, us, here in the US. What gives us the right... Honestly to throw those, we should be protecting, into cages over and over again....One man is no more superior to the other!! Just not acceptable!
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I am a social worker who used to work 16 hours a month in a prison. This is institutional criminal to house people who need a hospital. There has never been treatment available in prison.
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This is absolutely disgusting,unfortunately the UK is following fast...
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As a disabled veteran I have been diagnosed with numerous mental health disorders over the past 40 years in 2014 and I was diagnosed with PTSD schizoaffective disorder and dissociative identity disorder the care for veterans with mental illness is extremely poor the va mental health system diagnoses veterans with mental health issues and refuse to treat disorders I am enraged with the psychiatrist who I have had to deal with at the va hospital where I live I believe I have been red flagged by the va because I filed complaints with the patient advocate a formal complaint with the inspector general of department of veterans affairs. I asked my congressional rep to advocate for me and they did nothing to help me and the politicians wonder why veterans are killing themselves. The va mental health system has people who are not doing there jobs some of them are sadistic.
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Some jails and prisons are inhumane for everyone, ill or not.
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When I was psychotic and manic, they pepper sprayed me, put me in the chair, locked me in my cell in medical 23 hours a day. I was taken off all my psychotropic meds for a month and not allowed out of my cell with other inmates. When I did have the one oppertunity to be by mistake of the guard's, I loved it, i talked with the other girls and felt normal rather then isolated, alone and suicidal. I self medicate and use drugs. I get it though, if people are going to keep going off there meds and then kill someone they have to be held accountable. I was. I committed a battery charge cause I wasnt taking one of my meds. You send a murderer to a psychward, then when they get out and there non compliment again... They murder or comitt another crime. We should bring back hospitals for criminals.. Like hospitals for the criminally insane. That way they are focused around helping just the mentally ill
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What a sick country, i guess most Americans haven't heard of High Security Psychiatric Hospitals like Rampton
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There's more to it then that. Ronald Reagan while governor of California was one of the biggest advocates for closing psychiatric facilities to curb State spending. Other State Governors followed his example with NO thought for the repercussions behind this action. Here arrives the increase in Prison populations & expanded instances of Homelessness! Where did they plan for these people to go?? Sadly, they didn't CARE! I remeber this so well because I was living in Northern CA when it occurred.
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We need to fire the bosses and use that money to help people.
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is so sad to see this why are American people going to war when your own people suffering spend the money I really your people really desperate in need thanks
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God bless you Bill.
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This is truly horrible.
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Would be nice if their was more Doctors and Nurses for these people . Some kind of Special Housing Programs to help them live on their own ..Special Programs to help them taking care of some of their own Daily Needs ,Such as Shopping Cooking Bathing Themselves , This needs to be done all over the World ,Not just in the USA . But locking these People up .And Guards beating these People is Not Right to do
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“Then the king will answer, ‘The truth is... anything you did for any of my people here... you also did for me.’
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Very heartbreaking!
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30 years for a drug charge! Come on! I dont believe in this if it's a nonviolent crime. This warrants rehabilitation a real program for change not years in jail. I've heard so many cases of ppl getting more time for drug charges and repeated convictions involving drugs then ppl who have murdered or committed very violent crimes it is unreasonable
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MORE THAN HALF?! OK all they did was close the Funny Farms where the mentally ill were fed, clothed, bathed and relatively safe and LOCKED THEM UP IN PRISONS.
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Doctor .... once every six months. THATS criminal.
