Friday, October 31, 2003

The Mass Incarceration of the Mentally Ill

Prisons as Mental Institutions

U.S. prisons and jails, packed with over two million inmates [prisoners], hold many people that society would be wise to keep elsewhere. With state budgets bankrupted by the high costs of mass incarceration, the need to reconsider the draconian sentences meted out to nonviolent drug offenders has never been more obvious.

There is, moreover, another sizeable group of prisoners for which wholesale imprisonment is even less appropriate: the mentally ill. Prisoners with mental illness frequently endure violence, exploitation and extortion at the hands of other inmates [prisoners], and neglect and mistreatment by prison staff [guards.] Not only is the experience of imprisonment counter-therapeutic for such prisoners, many mental health experts believe that it dramatically increases their chances of psychiatric breakdown.

Despite good reasons to limit the incarceration of the mentally ill, the number of mentally ill people behind bars continues to grow. Over the past few decades, the country's prisons and jails have become its default mental health system. Somewhere between two and four hundred thousand mentally ill people are incarcerated, several times more than the number of people living in mental institutions.

The results, from a therapeutic, humanitarian, and human rights perspective, are appalling. "We are literally drowning in patients," explains one California prison psychiatrist, "running around trying to put our fingers in the bursting dikes, while hundreds of men continue to deteriorate psychiatrically before our eyes."

"Criminalizing" the Mentally Ill

The American Psychiatric Association, in a study published in 2000, concluded that as many as one in five prisoners was seriously mentally ill, with up to 5 percent being actively psychotic at any given moment. It also estimated that over 700,000 mentally ill people were processed through prison or jail each year. The mental disorders affecting these prisoners include such serious illnesses as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

There are no national data on historical rates of mental illness among prisoners, but state information suggests that the proportion of mentally ill prisoners has grown significantly. Human Rights Watch, in a report published last week, traces this increase to the inadequacy of the country's mental heath services.

With the "deinstitutionalization" effort that began in the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of mentally ill men and women were released from state institutions. These people escaped grim conditions and sometimes brutal treatment. They largely did not, however, obtain proper care after their release. Rather than receiving continuing mental health treatment, thousands of mentally ill people were released to communities that had made little or no accommodation for their care.

While states cut funding for mental hospitals, they have not made commensurate increases in their budgets for community-based mental health services. Chronically underfunded, the country's mental health system does not reach anywhere near the number of people who need it today.

Left untreated and unstable, mentally ill people enter the criminal justice system when they break the law. And given the punitive criminal justice policies of the past few decades, they often face long stays behind bars.

Neglect and Abuse

In a series of chilling passages in its recent report, Human Rights Watch described the abuses endured by the mentally ill while incarcerated.

To begin with, few prisons or jails have sufficient numbers of trained staff to accommodate prisoners' mental health needs. As a result, many mentally ill prisoners go untreated, or receive treatment that is extremely limited in both quantity and quality.

From other prisoners, who label them "dings" or "bugs," the mentally ill are vulnerable to assault, sexual abuse, exploitation, and extortion. From security staff, who frequently dismiss their symptoms as faking or manipulation, they may face physical abuse and mental harassment. Human Rights Watch cited numerous cases of correctional officers who taunted mentally ill prisoners, deliberately provoked them, physically mistreated them, used force against them maliciously, or turned a blind eye to abuses against them by others.

Viewing mentally ill prisoners as difficult and disruptive, correctional staff also frequently place them in barren high-security solitary confinement units. In these small, sometimes windowless cells, these inmates are deprived of nearly all human interaction and face extremely limited mental stimulus.

In such harsh conditions, some mentally ill prisoners deteriorate so severely that they must be removed to hospitals for acute psychiatric care. But after their condition stabilizes, they are frequently returned to the same segregation units until the next psychiatric episode occurs.

The Need for Reform

The immeasurable human suffering caused by the mass incarceration of the mentally ill is not only inhumane, it is unnecessary. While some dangerous offenders must be confined to protect society, there are many low-level, nonviolent offenders with mental illness who could be safely diverted into community-based mental health treatment programs.

By reducing the overall number of mentally ill prisoners, such programs would also free up prison resources that could be used to remedy the generally low quality of prison mental health care.

Federal legislation is currently pending in Congress to institute such reforms. The bill, called the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, would provide federal grants to divert mentally ill offenders into treatment programs rather than prison or jail. It also allocates funding to improve the quality of prison and jail mental health services, and to establish discharge programs for mentally ill prisoners who are released.

It is a national shame that our prisons and jails serve as mental institutions. It reflects a lack of planning, a failure of public commitment, and a single-minded focus on punishment. The pending legislation represents a saner and more compassionate approach.

By JOANNE MARINER posted 31 October 03

Related:

A STRUGGLE ON TWO FRONTS: PRISONS & IMPERIALIST WAR
After a war waged by the U.S. military against Vietnam which took the lives of more than 3 million Vietnamese people and more than 58,000 GIs, the U.S. finally withdrew in 1975. It had suffered its first official major military defeat by a united people struggle led by the Vietnamese, along with a mass U.S. anti-war movement.

Report on State Prisons Cites Mental Illness
NEW YORK: Nearly one of every four New York State prisoners who are kept in punitive segregation [solitary confinement], confined to a small cell at least 23 hours a day are mentally ill, according to a new report by a nonprofit group that has been critical of state prison policies.

High court keeps alive case of prisoners held in solitary
NEW ORLEANS: The nation's highest court refused Monday to kill a lawsuit brought by two prisoners and an ex-prisoner at the Louisiana State Penitentiary who spent decades in solitary confinement.

US: Mentally Ill Mistreated in Prison More Mentally Ill in Prison Than in Hospitals (New York, October 22, 2003) Mentally ill offenders face mistreatment and neglect in many U.S. prisons, Human Rights Watch. "Prisons have become the nation's primary mental health facilities. But for those with serious illnesses, prison can be the worst place to be."

Shut down the Security Torture Units
San Francisco: October 18 In solidarity with other prison activist organizations, MIM, RAIL, the Barrio Defense Committee (BDC) and the Prison Reform Unity Project held a four hour rally in San Francisco demanding the Security Housing Units (SHUs) in California prisons be shut down.

Solitary Confinement: Mental illness in prisons
As noted earlier, inmates [prisoners] with mental illness are over represented in our toughest prison settings. Symptoms of mental illness (i.e., delays in response time, paranoia, difficulty interpreting the actions of others, command hallucinations, and so on) can make complying with prison rules difficult.

Post-Incarceration Sentences
Pat: "The 1990s brought a new front in the war on drugs, featuring a new layer of the Prison Industrial Complex, which has the effect of ensuring that people coming in contact with the criminal punishment system remain within the grasp of the Prison Industrial Complex even beyond prison walls."

Inside Prison, Outside the Law
Every year, tens of thousands of prisoners in state and federal custody are attacked. The exact number who die is difficult to determine: According to the nonprofit Criminal Justice Institute, in 2000, the most recent year for which figures have been compiled, 55 prisoners were murdered, 39 died "accidentally," and 118 died for unknown reasons.

Day Seven of the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health:
PASADENA, CALIF: On the seventh day of a hunger strike by six psychiatric survivors to oppose human rights violations in the mental health system, the American Psychiatric Association faces a direct and unprecedented challenge from a Scientific Panel of 14 academics and clinicians.

Supreme Court Justice Criticises Sentencing Guidelines
San Francisco, August 9, 2003, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said today that prison terms are too long and that he favours scrapping the practice of setting mandatory minimum sentences for some federal crimes.

US prison population 2.1 million
The US prison population grew more than twice as fast last year as in 2001, bringing the total number of people held behind bars in the United States to more than 2.1 million, a record, according to a government report.

McKean Federal Prison: An Alleged Model
McKean, a federal correctional institution [? prison], does everything that "make 'em bust rocks" politicians decry--imagine, educating inmates [prisoners]! And it works. [Allegedly works.]

Prisoners Justice Day Press Release (Montreal)
On August 10th, 1974, Eddie Nalon bled to death in a solitary confinement unit at Millhaven Maximum Security Prison near Kingston,Ontario when the emergency call button in his cell failed to work. An inquest later found that the call buttons in that unit had been deactivated by the guards.

Notebook of a Prison Abolitionist
In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass recalls how as a slave he would occasionally hear of the "abolitionists." He did not know the full meaning of the word at first, but he heard it used in ways that he found appealing.

Study Warns of Rising Tide of Released Prisoners
Washington: More than 625,000 former prisoners will be coming back into U.S. society this year, part of a record flow of prisoners who will face crushing obstacles in finding work and housing and repairing long-fractured family ties, according to a newly released study.

Incite Statement Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex
We call social justice movements to develop strategies and analysis that address both state AND interpersonal violence, particularly violence against women.

Second International Conference on Human Rights & Prison Reform
**This second gathering will be much smaller and more in depth in participation. A report on the human rights violation of discrimination in regard to prisoners will be produced. This report will be given to the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights which will be having its annual meeting near our conference and is the"think tank" for the human rights agenda of the United Nations.

Judged Forever- The Orange County Register
US: California's largest job-placement program for parolees will be shut down May 31 after an Orange County Register investigation found that ex-convicts were sent to questionable jobs [?] and that the state was charged for placements that did not occur. [? According to the ruling-class]

California Family Visiting Case
US: CALIFORNIA: Today (5/03/08) in Superior Court around twenty friends and family members of inmates from CSP Solano showed up to show their support in the Gordon vs. CA Department of Corrections (Case #322862) which deals with the subject of bringing back Family Visits to all inmates.

Prison Rates Among Blacks Reach a Peak, Report Finds
An estimated 12 percent of African-American men ages 20 to 34 are in jail or prison, according to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department.

Justices question prison visitation policies
WASHINGTON: In a case that could affect the visitation rights of millions of prisoners, Supreme Court justices on Wednesday struggled with the question of whether inmates have a constitutional right to visits with friends and family.