Overcrowded Mental Institutions

In today’s society, it seems as more and more people are going without the mental treatment they need. The lack of sufficient mental health care, such as overcrowded mental institutions and appalling conditions of the mental institutions, affects crime in our society. In order to decrease a percentage of crime in our society, the government should establish more mental health facilities and maintain them to a better standard, also the government should focus more efforts on treating incarcerated mentally disordered people better. Many mentally disordered individuals are being turned away from mental institutions because the institutions are overcrowded. The denials of admittance into the institutions represent “a failure of the system to address the needs of that individual and places the individual, his family, and the community at risk” (Psychiatric, 2012). The mental institutions are unable to meet the demand of their regions. Many states have seen a “decline in psychiatric beds, coupled with a statewide population increase,” causing a significant problem (Psychiatric, 2012). In order to solve overcrowding and decrease the ghastly conditions of the mental institutions, the government tried to deinstitutionalize patients. The National Institute of Mental Health was “certain that severely
Also, offenders with mental disorders “reoffend at higher rates and more quickly after incarceration than offender without mental illness” (Anestis & Carbonell, 2014). Mentally disordered inmates do not receive the treatment that would be beneficial to them (Bartol & Bartol, 2014). They should not only receive mental health treatment but also expand beyond “to include cognitive-behavioral treatment about criminal thinking, anger management, and other behavioral issues” (Peterson, 2014). Treatment would decrease their recidivism rates, causing crime rates to