CORRECTIONS
Mentally ill inmates deserve better
BRIAN DAWE
Currently, the three largest inpatient psychiatric facilities in the country are jails: Los Angeles County Jail, Rikers Island Jail in New York City, and Cook County Jail in Chicago each individually house more persons with mental health conditions than any psychiatric institution in the United States.
Housing psychiatric patients in our prisons and jails is an important public safety issue. Of course, we cannot simply excuse unlawful, violent or predatory behavior because of an individual’ s mental capacity. However, we must also realize that traditional incarceration techniques are mostly ineffective in securing, treating and protecting the growing population of the mentally ill in America.
Throughout history, we have struggled with treating mental illness. By the mid-1950s, psychiatry had concluded that when dealing with the mentally ill, incarceration( absent treatment) often exacerbated the situation. Various treatment reforms were initiated, and by 1955 there was one mental health bed available for every 300 citizens. By 2005, unfortunately, that number was reduced tenfold, to one bed for every 3,000.
In most instances, individuals who could have been helped with a bed in an accredited institution have not“ gotten better.” Although new drugs and treatments have helped, many patients have simply been shifted from treatment to incarceration. As a result, our prisons and jails have become the nation’ s largest mental health facilities. There are three times as many seriously mentally ill individuals in our prisons and jails than there are in psychiatric hospitals, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center.
The challenges that this population presents, and the dangers of improper classification and housing assignments, are well known. According to a 2014 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center,“ Ten times more mentally ill people are now in jails and prisons than in state psychiatric hospitals: In 2012, approximately 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness were in prisons and jails, while about 35,000 severely ill patients were in psychiatric hospitals.”
In 2005, more than half of the incarcerated inmates had a mental health problem, compared with six years earlier, when that number was only 16 percent, or 283,800 state and local inmates.
According to the Department of Justice:
• 705,600 inmates in state facilities, or 56 percent of the population, had a mental health problem, with 15 percent of them meeting the criteria for a psychotic disorder.
• 479,000 inmates in local jails, or 64 percent of the population, were diagnosed with a mental health issue, with 24 percent of those inmates meeting the criteria for a psychotic disorder.
• 78,800 federal inmates, or 45 percent of that population, were diagnosed with a mental health issue.
• 70 percent of juvenile offenders“ suffer from mental disorders, at least 20 percent experiencing disorders so severe that their ability to function is significantly impaired,” according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Within the female inmate population, the numbers are worse:
• 73 percent of female inmates in state facilities have a reported mental health issue.( 75 percent of these inmates met the criteria for substance dependency or abuse.)
• 75 percent of female inmates in jail facilities have reported mental health issues.
Of the state inmates diagnosed with a mental health disorder, 49 percent had a“ violent offense as their most serious offense,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, these inmates on average spend five months more behind the walls than inmates without these disorders.
“… we spend far more on imprisonment of the mentally ill than we would otherwise spend on treatment and support.”— Stanford Law Three Strikes Project
So, what’ s the answer to this problem? When crimes are committed, society demands reciprocity. That reciprocity can come in many forms: fines, community service, programming( such as AA and NA), probation or incarceration. But what does society want or expect when the accused are mentally ill? What do they expect and want of us?
How are we to treat this population? As law enforcement officials, we do not choose who is sent behind those walls every day, nor are we empowered to make the policy decisions on where these men and women are to be housed, or the treatment prescribed. A 2014 survey by the American Correctional Officer Intelligence Network found that Michigan is the only state in which correctional officers are trained to deal with a mentally ill population.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed. With the nation ready, and our politicians looking for broad-based criminal justice reform, this is an issue everyone should agree on: mentally ill inmates belong in designated secure housing units created specifically for that purpose, complete with properly trained officers and psychiatric staff. At the next possible encounter, ask your elected officials how they suggest dealing with a mentally ill individual in our environment. If nothing else, the question will make them think— something that very few have done regarding this issue. d
Brian Dawe spent 16 years as a state correctional officer in Massachusetts, beginning on May 31, 1982. He is a co-founder of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, administrator for the Corrections and Criminal Justice Coalition, and the executive director for Corrections USA and the American Correctional Officer. He is the originator and owner of the American Correctional Officer Intelligence Network.
20 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ APRIL 2018