The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/mental-health/)
The odds that mentally troubled prisoners will be sent to solitary confinement for misconduct are 36 percent higher than for those without mental illness, according to a University of Massachusetts study of data from a 2004 national survey.
Texas’ Harris County jail is considered a progressive example of being attentive to mental health needs, with a suicide rate below the national average. But the recent suicides of two inmates point to systemic gaps in how the jail system handles prisoners in solitary confinement.
New research into how the brain works is contributing to innovative strategies for reducing recidivism and developing alternatives to incarceration.
Today, states spend hundreds of millions on evaluating and restoring the “mental competency” of individuals to stand trial. But such restoration is a far cry from the comprehensive mental health treatment needed by defendants who many experts say should never have been incarcerated in the first place.
For some Americans, health care and criminal justice are not two separate systems, but components of one big system that too often fails them. Frustrated cops call them “frequent fliers” because they regularly cycle between jail and hospital, so why do we think we can fix one without the other?
Evidence indicating that individuals imprisoned for sexually violent offenses have a low likelihood of recidivating was never made public, according to two California scholars─perhaps because it called into question the constitutional legitimacy of state laws making sex offenders subject to indefinite civil commitment long after they served their sentences.
The use of jails to house individuals with serious mental illness is contributing to the skyrocketing growth in jail populations across the U.S.—particularly in rural and small counties—experts told a conference at John Jay College Tuesday.
In Dallas County, the main outlet of psychiatric care for those with mental illness is no longer the corrections system. A five-year initiative using predictive technology is helping to divert justice-involved mentally ill individuals into effective treatment programs.
Jarrod Ramos left a years-long trail of harassment, threats and contemptuous behavior. “You can’t lock someone up because you have an inner fear about what he might do,” said Richard Barajas of the National Organization for Victim Assistance. “The criminal justice system is not designed for it. “
Nashville Sheriff Daron Hall is creating a facility to treat people who need mental health help instead of jailing them. A grand jury said that for many people needing treatment, “we seem to just throw them into the criminal justice system.”