- Care in the Community... Archived Message
Posted by Ken Waldron
on July 26, 2023, 4:36 am
...The Prison community that is. The criminalisation of the mentally ill:  I looked this up: "LAST August, a prison inmate in Jackson, Mich. -- someone the authorities described as ''floridly psychotic'' -- died in his segregation cell, naked, shackled to a concrete slab, lying in his own urine, scheduled for a mental health transfer that never happened. Last month in Florida, the head of the state's social services department resigned abruptly after having been fined $80,000 and is facing criminal contempt charges for failing to transfer severely mentally ill jail inmates to state hospitals. Ten days ago, the Supreme Court agreed to determine when mentally ill death row inmates should be considered so deranged that their execution would be constitutionally impermissible. The case involves a 48-year-old Navy veteran who is a diagnosed schizophrenic. In the decade leading up to the crime he was hospitalized 14 times for severe mental illness. According to a study released by the Justice Department in September, 56 percent of jail inmates in state prisons and 64 percent of inmates across the country reported mental health problems within the past year. Though troubling, none of this should come as a surprise. Over the past 40 years, the United States dismantled a colossal mental health complex and rebuilt -- bed by bed -- an enormous prison. During the 20th century we exhibited a schizophrenic relationship to deviance." https://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2007/01/harcourt_the_me.html Its a sixteen year old study...and since then US levels have dropped slightly but the US still has the highest incarceration rate in the world and most of the inmates real issue is that they are mentally ill. |
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