Growing Population of Mentally Ill Prisoners in U.S. Jails

Growing Population of Mentally Ill Prisoners in U.S. Jails

Introduction

The jails in the United States have become the dumping ground of the nation for a variety of challenging individuals, including those with mental illnesses. The majority of jail prisoners or prisoners are held for very short periods of time, ranging from one or two days to several months or more. A higher proportion of individuals come into contact, in one way or another, with the more than 3,500 U.S. jails than with any other correctional facility. This is simply because jails are the gatekeeper of the nation into corrections (Greenberg, 2008). More specifically, it is extremely rare for an individual to come into contact with the correctional system without having first been detained in a local public or private jail of some kind.

Discussion

Even more challenging to jail staff and mental health professionals than the continuous population turnover in the jails of the nation is that jail populations are not homogenous, but instead are made up of various kinds of individuals with a range of issues or problems, housed there for many different reasons: held over for trial or sentencing; held for transfer to the federal or other state authorities; convicted and sentenced but awaiting transport to or an open bed at a state-run or private prison; held as a juvenile for transfer to a youth court, agency, or facility; held on alleged probation or parole violations; held for transfer to a mental health facility; and convicted of one or more crimes and sentenced for a term of up to one year in jail (Ditton, 1999). In a twelve month period ending in June 2009, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimated that 12.8 million individuals were admitted to local jails. This extremely large and quickly rotated population poses significant challenges for jail staff and administrators with regard to identifying and responding to the mental health problems of detainees and prisoners. The transient nature of jail populations tends to relegate the recognition and treatment of mental illness to the bottom of the “to do” list, while maintaining a safe and secure institution tends to be the primary goal of jail staff, given the lack of financial, medical, and mental health resources (Muraskin, 2010).

Various kinds of mental illnesses and disorders have been recognized in almost two-thirds of the nation'jail population. Nationwide data collection efforts on mental illnesses tend to focus on two ways to identify mentally ill prisoners; first a recent history of mental illness, defined by a clinical diagnosis or some kind of prior treatment by a mental health professional; or second current symptoms of a mental illness, which are typically identified using the criteria in the seminal psychiatric text, DSM-IV. According to the most latest BJS report, the most common kinds of mental illnesses and disorders found among jail prisoners include mania, major depression, and psychotic disorders. Mania and major depression, reported by more than half of all prisoners, are identified by prisoner symptoms such ...