MENTAL HEALTH CARE FOR PEOPLE IN JAIL

SOWK 534- Fall 2012

Assignment # 2:

MENTAL HEALTH CARE FOR PEOPLE IN JAIL

Sakinah Wood

September 26, 2012

Instructor: Laura Gale

Word Count: 3574Abstract

This paper explores the policies of mental health care for people in jail. To accomplish this end, I will focus specifically on an analysis and assessment of our current policies. The policies of mental health care for people revolve around the equal rights of prisoners in the context of mental health care. This paper also provides recommendations with reference to these policies for how to better provide mental health services and how the recommendations are specially aimed at improving the lives and well being of the mentally ill population being held throughout jail and prisons throughout American.

A.Introduction: Issue, Policy, Problem

The mental illness prevalence among inmates has grasped the attention and interest of both criminal justice and mental health fields. At the most local level of the criminal justice system we have jails, having an extensive range of criminals and a fast increasing inmate turnover. With this fluid and diverse population, it calls for a range of mental health services which many local prisons are not equipped to handle. In particular, the jails in rural areas are a major concern, because they do not have adequate services for those with mental health concerns. Often times, simply due to a deficiency of accessible community mental health services in rural areas, it results to a revolving door in and out the jail system.

The issue surrounding people in jail in need of mental health is due to the shutdown of the nation's psychiatric hospitals, which left these people suffering from mental illness homeless and resulted in most of them ending up in the system. Prison is not the first choice in which to provide mental health care. However, unfortunately jails and prisons are faced with fixing this load. The most common reasons behind mental illness in prisons include insecurity regarding future prospects (e.g. relationships, work), isolation from social networks, lack of meaningful activity, lack of privacy, enforced solitude, various forms of violence, and overcrowding.

The prevailing issue of inadequate facilities of mental health care for people in jail is an infringement of basic human rights. In any correctional environment, Prisoners and detainees have the right to mental health treatment. For prisoners, these rights are based on the 8th amendment that says cruel and unusual punishments should not be tolerated due to their convictions. For jail inmates, these rights are based on the 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution that says no one should be denied equal protection of the laws. The reason is because jail inmates have not been convicted yet and are still awaiting trial (Griffin, 2007). Former President Jimmy Carter brought light to the mentally ill population during his presidency in 1979, in attempt to get federal programs to focus on this issue. President Carter stated how large numbers of chronically mentally ill individuals in the community were faced with inadequate community-level care (Bloom, 2010).

The problem came ...