Mentally Ill And Incarceration Essay

The War on the Mentally Ill and Incarceration
Listening to any of the current 2016 Presidential debates, it is blatant that the American people have many concerns of the mentally ill and incarceration. It goes unnoticed that our mental health care system is just another system that has failed the American people. As Hillary Clinton once stated, “We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population while keeping our communities safe." Since our incarceration facilities have a surplus of inmates who are mentally ill, one proposition of reducing prison population could be to create a preventative movement to help the mentally ill. Therefore, there would be a less amount of misunderstood people who are mentally ill resuming …show more content…
Today the department of justice claims that 1.3 million people who are mentally ill are being jailed or imprisoned, while only 700,000 mentally ill people are being treated in mental health facilities (Frances). Most of the mentally ill in jail are imprisoned for committing crimes, but there are also instances when they are imprisoned as an overflow ritual due to the low count of psychiatric beds readily available. Some will argue that if a person commits a crime that they should be held accountable for their actions, but there is a gray area in between this matter. How do you hold someone accountable for an action he or she had no control over? Or how do you hold someone accountable who doesn’t have the mental stability or capacity to know right from wrong? Whether a mental illness is as minimal as anxiety and depression or as severe as schizophrenia and bipolar, it hinders people from living a normal daily life. People who writhe with mental illness have a three times likely chance of being in jail or prison rather than a psychiatric facility (Aufderhide). Due to the fact that they are often misunderstood, unable to comprehend or communicate with people in a functional manner, their actions are reprimanded, which leads to incarcerations. This is the beginning of the vicious

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