Preview

New Asylums

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
458 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
New Asylums
New Asylums There is a growing number of prisoners faced with mental illness which is leading to American prisons being turned into new mental asylums. There is a need for intervention but determining an affective method is the real challenge. As shown in the video, there is growing frustration among correction officers leading to what appears to be abuse between the prisoner and the officer. Correction officers are no longer only responsible for the security of the prison and the prisoners but for managing the mental health status of the mentally ill inmates and arranging plans accordingly.

Prisons are currently designed for security and correctional programs not for mental treatment, which is where the problem with prisons turning into asylums begins to arise. Correction officers are trained police officers not doctors, therapists, or mental illness specialists. In order to effectively handle prisoners suffering from mental illness, prisons need to have staff that is specifically trained in mental health. Over the years, mental hospitals have shut down and started to fade out of the health care system leaving individuals suffering from mental diseases with no where to turn for help. The individuals battling mental health issues are expected to seek help from within the community in community based mental health programs. However, adequate funding is not available from the government to support the new transition of community based mental health programs.

Community members are also not committed to helping the individuals suffering from mental illnesses which leads them to commit crimes due to failed methods of intervention. Once in prison, the burden of dealing with the inmates falls on correction officers who do not know adequate ways to deal with their illness, leading to more frustration for the prisoner and their illnesses still not being addressed appropriately. Providing effective psychiatric care in a maximum security prison is extremely

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The elimination of state mental hospitals was not based on human need, but rather a political policy decision. The shortage of mental institutions creates a shift in the role of prison systems and presents several different issues for mentally ill inmates. The inmates are not medically treated in…

    • 252 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In this article, the incarceration of the mentally ill is encouraged because it is safer than keeping them in mental institutions. It claims that mental institutions are extremely dangerous by their very nature and the nurses there are trained to treat the mentally ill, not to keep them from hurting themselves or other people. In prisons however, the guards are equipped with the experience of a 16 week training program and are able to handle any commotion that might be made without endangering the lives of the prisoners or the public. This viewpoint is contrary to that in Pete Earley’s book because it endorses the imprisonment of the mentally ill, while in contrast Earley strongly believes the mentally ill need treatment, not imprisonment.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Best Essays

    The Released

    • 2137 Words
    • 9 Pages

    America’s prisons have become a dumping ground for the mentally ill because non-prison treatment facilities are unavailable or unaffordable. PBS Frontlines documentary, The New Asylum, “goes deep inside Ohio’s state prison system to explore the complex and growing issue of mentally ill prisoners. With unprecedented access to prison therapy sessions, mental health treatment meetings, crisis wards, and prison disciplinary tribunals…” Five years later in 2005 film makers Karen O’Connor and Miri Navasky went back to the Ohio state prison to make a documentary, The Released, that uncovers what happens to the mentally ill when they are released. The Released shows that even though the mentally ill are being treated in the prisons, because they have no stable environment to go to and no way to take care of themselves, once released the inmates soon end up back in prison or homeless.…

    • 2137 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prison Recidivism

    • 1024 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The shift from deinstitutionalization to criminalization for mentally ill offenders has further added to the complexities occurring within United States prison system. The number of mentally ill inmates has continued to increase significantly as public psychiatric hospitals have continued to close. In addition to overcrowding, budget constraints and allegations of mistreatment among inmates with psychiatric disorders correctional facilities have been given the task of providing treatment to the large percentage of inmates with serious mental illnesses. A recent study found that over one million offenders diagnosed with a serious mental illness are under “correctional supervision” and these offenders are highly more likely to be rearrested…

    • 1024 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Such as impossibly large caseloads, physically unpleasant facilities, and institutional cultures that are unsympathetic to the importance of mental health services. Gains in mental health staffing, programs, and physical resources that were made in recent years have all too frequently since been swamped by the tsunami of prisoners with serious mental health needs. Overworked staff find it difficult to respond even to psychiatric emergencies, let alone to promote recovery from serious illness and the enhancement of coping skills. Budget constraints and minimal public support for investments in the treatment, not punishment, of prisoners, elected officials have been reluctant to provide the funds and leadership needed to ensure prisons have sufficient mental health resources. Twenty-two out of forty state correctional systems reported in a recent survey that they did not have an adequate number of mental health…

    • 857 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    If the inmate doesn’t have a mental illness, then the options for inpatient care are harder to acquire. It takes special security and regulations to take a prisoner to a public hospital because they are considered a threat to the public, regardless of his or her crimes. If the inmate’s life is in danger, then there might be no choice but to take him or her to the hospital for inpatient care.…

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Conflict Diagnosis

    • 1151 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Suicide rates within prisons, although not the leading cause of inmate deaths, are the leading cause of preventable deaths in a jail or prison setting. Inmates are particularly at risk during the first 24 hr under custody as they face the reality of incarceration (Hayes, 1995). Many inmates, especially those first incarcerated for felony cases, embody a sense of fear, isolation, distrust for everyone, a lack of control, and shame which can lead to choosing suicide as a way to escape from it all. Mental health is considered to be a conflict diagnosis in different facilities on how to approach and find out which inmates suffer from a mental illness and the steps to take to help prevent prison inmate suicides and the action required if an inmate attempts or succeeds at a suicide.…

    • 1151 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mentally Ill in Prison

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Accessing treatment is quite difficult when there is such a lack of availability of resources in the community. Throughout the United States there is a need for more mental health treatment and additional housing in the communities. Due to state and federal funding and program cuts, there are more closures of facilities. The remaining local facilities are extremely overcrowded which impacts treatment. With the increase number of patients, case management services may not be in a position to provide quality care in a timely manner. People have also become less tolerant of the mentally ill offenders. Many of them believe that these offenders deserve a tough prison sentence and that anything less would be too lenient. However, without the proper treatment in prison, these offenders will be back on the streets among society and potentially worse off from a mental standpoint.…

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The New Asylum

    • 1183 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Frontline episode “The New Asylums”, dove into the crisis mentally ill inmates face in the psychiatric ward in Ohio state prisons. The episode shows us the conditions and every day lives of mentally ill patients in Ohio state prisons, and explains how these inmates got to this point. It appeared that most of these prisoners should have been patients in an institute of some sort, out in society, but unfortunately due to whatever circumstances they ended up in prison. According to the episode, most of the inmates end up in prison due to them not coping with the outside world on their own. Prior to becoming imprisoned, the inmates had difficulties dealing with the outside world. Mainly due to lack of necessary psychiatric treatment, the soon to be inmates would get arrested for things such as violent behavior, robbery, and rape. This behavior would cause them to go to jail, and after repeated offenses they end up falling into prison.…

    • 1183 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    for years, courts have treated the mentally ill with the same dispassion accorded any other defendant. The results have been devastating. More than twice as many people with mental illness live in prisons as in state mental hospitals. When they are confined in tiny cells, their conditions often worsen, increasing their propensity to act out. (2008).…

    • 1046 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    James, D. J., & Glaze, L. E. (2006). Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.…

    • 1664 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Prisons have a great amount of mentally ill inmates and there is a risk that other inmates could developmental disabilities as well. The increase of mentally ill inmates in the prisons is because they are in danger to the public and also that there is a shortage of mental illness facilities. The issue of all of these mental cases in our prisons could all be easily eliminated if the community had sufficient resourceful treatment programs and other possible community programs that the mentally ill are able to experience. Having these mentally ill people roaming around the community and not being taken care of is only going to cause problems and not make a bit of difference.…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    To speak in a purely financial light, the expense of treating mentally ill people in jail is much too high, and this is a cost that one can do without. According to criminaljusticeprograms.com, a website dealing with many aspects of mentally ill people who are put into prison, “In 2014, the Columbus Dispatch reported ‘The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spent $41.7 million on mental-health care and medications in the fiscal year 2014 and is projected to spend $49 million this year. That is on top of the $22,836 annual overall cost per inmate.’” From this, the obvious conclusion would be that all of these extra expenses could be avoided if people who have a mental illness are admitted into psychiatric facilities, where they can get proper care. The site also says that “Law enforcement workers with no training in psychology are at a disadvantage and unfairly forced to act in psychiatric and counselor roles they aren't equipped for – and do not know how to handle properly.”…

    • 1842 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    There are now far more persons with mental illness in our nation’s jails and prisons than in state mental hospitals. See Michael Winerip, Bedlam on the Streets, N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE (May 23, 1999). A September 2006 Department of Justice report stated that as of mid-2005 “more than half of all prison and jail inmates had a mental health problem, including 705,600 inmates in State prisons, 78,800 in Federal prisons, and 479,900 in local jails.” Doris J. James and Lauren E. Glaze, Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates, U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (Sept. 2006).…

    • 3278 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Correctional Institutions

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The extent that correctional institutions should be responsible for handling mentally ill individuals should be none. There are not fully equipped to handle the vast number of mentally ill individuals with their multiply types of conditions. Correctional institutes are already overcrowded with inmates and understaffed. The staff doesn’t have the necessary training to deal or identify people with mental problems.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays