AMERICA'S SHAME

The Fact That America Prisons House More Mentally Ill People Than U.S.
Mental Health Facilities Is A Disgrace

Americans like to consider themselves a compassionate people. But how
is it possible to react with anything but collective shame to the
disclosure that 20 percent of the inmates and prisoners in the
nation's jails and prisons are mentally ill?

That report, by Human Rights Watch, at least helps explain why America
has one of the largest prison populations in the world. It's not
because we are a more lawless society than other nations, or that we
are even more bullish on punishment than the rest of the world.

Partially, it's because we have, by default, decided that it is easier
and cheaper to keep our mentally ill in penal institutions than in
mental health facilities. How else to explain the fact that there are
2.1 million people with mental health problems behind bars, but only
80,000 mental patients in hospitals designed to treat emotional problems?

That prisons and jails have become de facto asylums puts an enormous
strain on correctional officers, police, prosecutors, judges and
others in the criminal justice system who are ill-prepared to handle
mental health problems. Emotionally troubled inmates, for instance,
are much more inclined to cause disciplinary problems behind bars.

For the most part, correctional officers have no alternative but to
place such disciplinary cases in solitary confinement. And enforced
solitude only tends to feed and aggravate the mentally ill. Moreover,
very few correctional institutions have programs or specially trained
staff to handle mentally ill inmates.

That our prisons have become modern day bedlams is not only America's
shame, it is a national scandal. Our criminal justice system has
become America's largest mental health agency. That's a perversion of
both justice and rational health care policy.