The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/mental-health/)
The Suzanne Wright Foundation proposed to the Trump adminnistration a “Safe Home” — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes” — project. It would use volunteer data to identify “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act.”
When you apply a criminal justice model to mental illness, “you’re getting what you should get—a disaster,” warns Miami-Dade County Judge Steven Leifman, a pioneering advocate for developing alternatives to incarceration for seriously mentally ill individuals.
Mental health courts offer troubled individuals a treatment alternative to jail. They’ve begun to take hold in rural Minnesota’s “Iron Range,” where the fourth such court in the state recently began hearing its first cases.
According to a study of the Michigan Department of Corrections, prison workers are more likely to show symptoms of depression and anxiety or suicidal ideation than even first responders or members of the military.
A media probe of U.S. jail deaths finds that scores of facilities have been sued or investigated for refusing inmates medication, ignoring cries for help, failing to monitor them despite warnings they might harm themselves, or imposing such harsh conditions that the sick got sicker.
James Jordan is charged with killing a hiker on the Appalachian Trail. A “trail angel” moved him away temporarily, but should he have been committed?
Law enforcement officers around the U.S. spend nearly a quarter of their time shuttling individuals suffering a mental health crisis to treatment centers—which not only diverts them from public safety responsibilities, but further criminalizes mental illness, a new survey concludes.
A 24-year-old Minnesota man with “anger issues” was charged with attempted homicide after throwing a five-year-old boy from a 40-foot balcony at the Mall of America. Emmanuel Aranda had been banned from the mall for other incidents and referred to a mental health court.
The Hampton Roads Regional Jail in historic coastal Virginia has been struggling with inmate deaths, staff shortages, and funding issues for more than a decade. But getting help from local and state politicians has been an uphill battle.
Plush Dozier, 23, has been in New York’s maximum security Attica prison since last year because the local jail was unable to treat his mental-health problems. He is being held in solitary even though he is yet to be convicted of a crime.