It's not a secret anymore...
Correctional facilities are filling up with the mentally ill.
In the 1980s, as States began to look for ways to cut their ballooning budgets, psychiatric hospitals and mental institutions were among the first to close their doors. Patients were sent to outpatient facilities. Many eventually ended up as wanderers on city streets, delusional, disturbed, and far from cured. New York State did likewise. The mentally ill were dumped into the streets. Now they make up a large portion of New York's prison population.
I just finished reading an enlightening editorial in the New York Times for Sunday, November 2, 2003, titled "Treating Mental Illness in Prison." According to the Times' editors, "Two new reports from prison study groups suggest that mentally ill inmates are prime candidates not just for recidivism, but for destructive behavior and suicide when prisons fail to handle them properly."
Having been incarcerated for more than twenty-six years, I know that, for the most part, prisons are primarily for punishment and not for treatment. This current system is not designed to be kind to the mentally ill.
Of course, over the years I have met many dedicated and concerned correctional employees as well as many from the civilian staff. The latter group, who are trained to work with the disturbed. I know a number of psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, therapists and counselors who do try to do their best with the limited resources they have to work with. Still, the negative pull of the prison setting, especially in walled maximum security facilities where, I assume, most of the inmates who are deemed to suffer from some form of mental illness live, offset whatever positive therapies a mental health worker could provide.
According to the editorial, "Nearly 45 percent of the prisoners in the New York study reported that they had tried suicide, more than a third reported self-mutilation and 20 percent had been previously admitted to a psychiatric hospital." It then went on to say, "When their prison terms are finished, these inmates are dumped onto the streets, where they become a hazard to themselves and to the community." I have known this for years. I have seen the same faces come back into the system, some for parole violations, others for new crimes.
It is good, however, that the public is becoming more aware of this. These reports were done by Human Rights Watch and the Correctional Association of New York, alert, legitimate, and credible organizations.
As a Christian, I view prisons as wide-open mission fields full of broken, damaged, and hurting men and women who need a touch of love from the Lord as well as many words of forgiveness, hope, and healing.
D.B.
In the 1980s, as States began to look for ways to cut their ballooning budgets, psychiatric hospitals and mental institutions were among the first to close their doors. Patients were sent to outpatient facilities. Many eventually ended up as wanderers on city streets, delusional, disturbed, and far from cured. New York State did likewise. The mentally ill were dumped into the streets. Now they make up a large portion of New York's prison population.
I just finished reading an enlightening editorial in the New York Times for Sunday, November 2, 2003, titled "Treating Mental Illness in Prison." According to the Times' editors, "Two new reports from prison study groups suggest that mentally ill inmates are prime candidates not just for recidivism, but for destructive behavior and suicide when prisons fail to handle them properly."
Having been incarcerated for more than twenty-six years, I know that, for the most part, prisons are primarily for punishment and not for treatment. This current system is not designed to be kind to the mentally ill.
Of course, over the years I have met many dedicated and concerned correctional employees as well as many from the civilian staff. The latter group, who are trained to work with the disturbed. I know a number of psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, therapists and counselors who do try to do their best with the limited resources they have to work with. Still, the negative pull of the prison setting, especially in walled maximum security facilities where, I assume, most of the inmates who are deemed to suffer from some form of mental illness live, offset whatever positive therapies a mental health worker could provide.
According to the editorial, "Nearly 45 percent of the prisoners in the New York study reported that they had tried suicide, more than a third reported self-mutilation and 20 percent had been previously admitted to a psychiatric hospital." It then went on to say, "When their prison terms are finished, these inmates are dumped onto the streets, where they become a hazard to themselves and to the community." I have known this for years. I have seen the same faces come back into the system, some for parole violations, others for new crimes.
It is good, however, that the public is becoming more aware of this. These reports were done by Human Rights Watch and the Correctional Association of New York, alert, legitimate, and credible organizations.
As a Christian, I view prisons as wide-open mission fields full of broken, damaged, and hurting men and women who need a touch of love from the Lord as well as many words of forgiveness, hope, and healing.
D.B.
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