United States, it Is Estimated That Up

¶ … United States, it is estimated that up to 350,000 inmates in prisons suffer from some sort of mental illness. In fact, the U.S. penal system holds three times more people with mental illness than the nation's entire psychiatric hospitals. Some have seen a trend that tends to incarcerate the mentally ill in order to keep them locked away from society; often the only alternative because of the dwindling funding for mental hospitals and clinics.

Indeed, incarceration may actually increase the trauma of mental illness causing even more damage to their psyches. In addition, what happens to these incarcerated individuals when their service time is up? Simply, they are released into society and often become homeless because of their illness, and thus often victimized by police and other law enforcement agencies (National Public Radio, 2012).

According to a recent study by the United States Department of Justice, 56 per cent of jail inmates in State Prisons and 64 per cent of inmates across the country reported mental health problems with the past year. This, combined with the staggering new influx of inmates (from 200,000 persons in 1970 to more than 1.3 million in 2002) results in both the highest number of individuals behind bars and the highest incarcerated mentally ill of any reporting nation, and certainly the highest percentage ever in the United States.

Conservatively, it appears that one of the predominant (about 44 per cent) treatment options for the incarcerated mentally ill is simply to not treat at all. Before one can have a treatment program, one must have an assessment for mental health; if there is no assessment, there is no diagnosis, no diagnosis, and no treatment.

There are several reasons for this: type and nature of crime, lack of funds to complete adequate assessments, lack of staff to treat, crowded prison conditions in which individual issues are not readily visible, and extreme substance abuse and masked behavior (Public Broadcasting System -Frontline, 2009). There seem to be a huge number of reasons that the mentally ill become problems for the law. First, there are certainly inadequate resources for the mentally ill once they have been released from prison.

It is difficult enough for convicted felons without mental illness to reintegrate into society, to jobs, and to family. When the problem is compounded by inadequate mental health care, access to needed medications and community support, then the mentally ill offender really has very few options. Simply the proximity of being on the street without adequate medication puts both the individual and society at risk -- and the more society is fearful, the more there is pressure to "clean up the streets.

Police officers are trained in the law, not in mental health mitigation. Many have very limited medical training, and only for emergencies. Those who are trained in dealing with the mentally ill are have very little access to the incarcerated prisoner once rearrested by local law enforcement. The issue then, is twofold: society must decide if it wants to fund appropriate levels of care for the mentally indigent, which would be a preventative measure and save money in the end. Alternatively, if there is to be no funding, then.