Mental Health Issues In Prisons

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In the early days of corrections, the mental health of inmates was ignored. However, today it has become a major issue in American prisons with more and more institutions facing the challenge of mental health head-on rather than sweeping this long-time problem under the rug. Correctional institutions have tried to introduce psychiatric programs with the hope of treating mentally ill offenders and lowering recidivism rates. Prisons now include mental health professionals, who work closely with prison staff with the intent of improving inmate health and behavior, but it is not an easy task as constant financial hurdles put these two goals out of reach. Rehabilitation is still a new concept in the criminal justice system and correctional facilities that exist today were never designed to be long-term or short-term behavioral health facilities. In the 1960’s a process called deinstitutionalization began where states decided to reduce and close a number of their mental health hospitals (Aufderheide p. 17). The supporters of deinstitutionalization believed the treatment of mentally ill persons would be provided by community health programs but unfortunately the government and states did not provide the funding necessary. The deinstitutionalization soon led to transinstitutionalization which occurs when the mentally ill are bounced back and forth from the mental health and criminal justice system (p.17) According to Coffey (2012), the greater mental health community generally places the blame on former President Ronald Reagan's administration because the federal funding to the mental health facilities was removed and the cost of running programs was transferred back to the states. Nationwide, this final set of cuts resulted in the closing of state hospitals and institutions. Since many families and group homes were not prepared for this, thousands of mentally ill patients had nowhere to go. The city streets became home for many of these patients and for some, it led to a life of petty crime. Law enforcement would arrest more mentally ill offenders for these petty crimes and they were given longer sentences because incarceration became the safer and wiser option rather than letting them run free in the community. Over the years, the number of inmates with mental illness has continued to increase as a result of the economic crisis, budget cuts to community health services, and diminished access to psychiatric medications and care (p.53). American taxpayers pay $15 billion per year just to house individuals with diagnosed mental disorders in jails and prisons. In a study done in 2006 titled Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported 56 percent of state inmates, …show more content…
Although inmates are screened for mental illness during booking, research has shown they fail to identify inmates who are mentally ill (Goldberg p.82). Researchers, through funding by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), developed and validated two brief, free mental health screening tools: The Correctional Mental Health Screen (CMHS) and the Brief Jail Mental Health Screen (BJMHS) (p.82). The screens consist of standard one-page questionnaires administered by officers in three to five minutes and score by adding up questions answered “yes”. The CMHS screens can identify nine categories of mental disorder in both male and female inmates (p.82). The BJMHS better identifies male inmates with mental disorders and is being refined to increase its effectiveness in identifying female detainees with anxiety and stress related mental illness (p.82). These newer screening methods have helped correctional staff give more accurate and effective screenings to inmates which allows treatment to begin sooner rather than …show more content…
(2012) conducted a study which compared the Connecticut Offender Reentry Program (CORP) and retrospective data for inmates who received standard treatment planning services from the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addictions Services (DMHAS). The purpose of the study was to see the effectiveness of the Connecticut Offender Reentry Program. The comparative data found that 14.1% of the CORP participants were rearrested within 6 months of discharge compared to 28.3% of the DMHAS group (p.1). Due to a smaller percentage of CORP participants being recidivistic, the data indicated support for specialized treatment programs (p.1). Kesten (2012) later mentions the comparison study shows that prerelease intervention and post release treatment planning services may need to be more specialized or structured in order to reduce recidivism

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