Mental Illness In Prison Analysis

Walking into the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center I could feel my palms getting sweaty, my heart racing, my body started shaking, an anxiety attack was creeping up. I started looking different directions figuring out how I could make a run for it, how I could stop my mind from racing, how I could get fresh air. I needed to somehow endure it; after all I was only there on a class tour. A tour that lasted one hour, but felt as if I was incarcerated for five years. I have suffered from mild anxiety since I was a child and had never thought about how it would be to be incarcerated. Walking around the facility I imagined how mentally ill inmates deal with being incarcerated. How do individuals that suffer from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia
Solitary confinement is a room for individuals to be punished. The mentally ill are being placed in these rooms to be separated from other inmates and because they cannot be handled by correction officers and are all usually treated the same way. This in fact places great punishment on these individuals who in most cases do not deserve it. In the article, “The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails: A State Survey”, prisons and jails are referred to as the “new asylums” and goes on to state that mentally ill individuals have the right to receive proper medical care for mental illness just as individuals that suffer from diabetes, hypertension, and HIV get proper treatment. In the next few paragraphs I will give examples of mentally ill individuals who were let down by the criminal justice system. Instead of receiving the proper care that they needed most were abused or even committed
If these individuals do commit crimes public officials need to, “Implement and promote jail diversion programs such as mental health courts, use court-ordered outpatient treatment (assisted outpatient treatment/AOT) to provide the support at-risk individuals need to live safely and successfully in the community” (Torrey et al., 2014, p. 6). In the article “The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails: A State Survey” it goes on to state that, “Decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have affirmed that prisons and jails have a duty to provide medical care to individuals in their custody” (Torrey et al., 2014, p.11). Policy makers need to conduct studies to compare housing the mentally ill individuals in prison and jails verses the cost of treating them in health facilities or in the community. Intake screenings need to be more precise in determining if medications are needed, suicide attempts, and other risks related with mental illness. Mandatory release planning should be provided to plan community support and foster recovery. Mental illness treatment is also needed for these