Mentally ill being dumped in prisons

Their stories are sad and all too familier. A woman walks into a grocery store, grabs a tooth brush and begins brushing her teeth. A man repeatedly enters his boyhood home although he hasn't lived there for years. The bizarre and illogical conduct of the mentally ill can, at times, land them in the county jail or worse a state prison. The criminalization of mental illness is an American crisis in full bloom.
Recently the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, a Vera Institute of Justice project, issued a report on the state of America's correctional facilities. The report was as astonishing as it was unflattering to the entire criminal justice system.
An incredible 13.5 million people spend some time in jail or prison each year. The average daily count of inmates in America's correctional facilities exceeds 2.2 million and nearly 1 out of every 6 is mentally ill.
The increase in mentally ill inmates began in the 1970s when mental hospitals were emptied with the idea that the mentally ill could be better treated in the community. The deinstitutionalization of those suffering from mental illness was a good idea that has gone awry. As funding dried up, correction facilities became de facto psychiatric hospitals.
This phenomenon was further complicated by and onslaught of tough state and federal criminal statutes. Mandatory sentencing, a crack down on juvenile offenders and aggressive prosecution of drug offenders have resulted in astounding, if not alarming, results. In 1972, state and federal prisons held 200,000 inmates. Less than 35 years later, with the inclusion of local jails, that number has increased more than 10 fold.
Criminal court orders
The transformation is dizzying. Prior to 1972 more that 550,000 patients were in mental hospitals. Today only 70,000 reside in mental health facilities and 21,000 of them were placed as a result of criminal court orders. There are literally five times as many people with mental illness in jail as are in psychiatric institutions.
The criminal justice system is being used as a tool to remove ill and, at times, incorrigible people from the streets and warehouse them in correctional facilities. According to the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics 70 percent of inmates with mental illness are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. That fact alone is a national tragedy and public embarrassment.
Further complicating the matter is the revolving door that many mentally ill inmates pass through again and again. As the Commission on Safety and Abuse suggested, administrative segregation -- more commonly known as solitary confinement -- plays a role in the safe administration of a correction facility. At the same time its misuse or overuse can have grave consequences, especially for the mentally ill. Inmates afflicted with mental illness tend to act out or defy authority or logic for that matter. As a result, they spend a disproportionate amount of time in segregation and ultimately, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, they spend on average 15 more months in prison than inmates without mental illness.
Dumping ground
Tragically, many mentally ill inmates are never paroled. They serve the maximum term of their sentence in prison and then are dumped into the community without supervision. They are also more likely than other inmates to be homeless, unemployed and alcohol or drug dependent. The result is inevitably a ticket back to prison.
There are, unquestionably, inmates with mental illness who belong in prison. The mere fact that an individual suffers from mental illness does not negate her culpability. Only those individuals who are incompetent to stand trial or deemed insane, unable to understand the difference between right and wrong, may avoid a prison cell.
In the short term, jails and prisons may be the best and only place for many offenders suffering from mental illness. Community mental health centers are neither prepared nor required to deal with a mass exodus of mentally ill inmates. Lance Courturier, chief psychiatrist for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections told "Frontline," all inmates have a constitutional right to basic psychiatric care. However, those with mental illness in the community do not share the same constitutional guarantee. It is clearly time to reassess America's priorities when some of our nation's most vulnerable citizens are better off in jail than on the street.
Matthew T. Mangino is the former district attorney of Lawrence County, Pa., and a feature columnist for the Pennsylvania Law Weekly. He can be reached at matthewmangino@aol.com)