Even if an inmate's sentence is not oppressively long, their treatment while incarcerated can still constitute subhuman treatment. Prisons are not medical facilities, but they regularly are forced to deal with mental health problems and care for elderly and terminally ill inmates. Food, if it's even edible, usually lacks enough nutrition for inmates' health to not deteriorate. Plus, with a lack of opportunities to see family, read, or gain skill sets, inmates are placed in buildings which lack any resemblance of the civilized world.
“Twenty-five former cells have been converted to rooms. Instead of bars, each room has a door and its own bed, sink, toilet and television. Clients will eat in a communal dining area and receive services and some training. It will be a “one-stop shop” for people experiencing homelessness and job loss or living with poorly or untreated substance use disorders or mental illness.“
New York Daily News
September 17, 2019
Read More“"We also know that people suffering a mental health issue are likely to be in jail longer than the average arrestee," Fuller said, "which puts them in a system that is not specifically designed for their mental health issues. It's designed for criminal justice."“
CBS 3 West Michigan
August 19, 2019
Read More“On Tuesday (August 13), the 3,885-bed facility, which was slated to house pretrial detainees with mental health and substance abuse issues, was scrapped in large part due to years of activism from prison reform groups and added to a growing nationwide trend of halting the expansion of mass incarceration in favor of investing in community-based treatment programs and other alternatives.“
BET
August 15, 2019
Read More“But Pennsylvania is one of many states that has far too few hospital beds for the mentally ill defendants who need them, leaving people like Elle to languish in jail while they wait for a spot. It has ranked among the worst states when it comes to these wait times, a nationwide problem that experts say may be linked to the downsizing of psychiatric hospitals and inadequate community mental-health resources. “
The Marshall Project
June 6, 2019
Read More“Today, one out of every three men imprisoned in Colorado — and four out of every five women inmates — say they have some type of moderate to critical mental health need, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections. The number of inmates with mental health needs in Colorado’s prisons has steadily risen in the past two decades, from about 4,500 in 1998 to about 10,700 last year.“
The Denver Post
May 25, 2019
Read More“State spending on mental health care for prison inmates has nearly quadrupled in the past two decades. Expenditures on the Colorado Department of Corrections’ “mental health subprogram” increased from about $4.4 million in fiscal year 2000-01 to nearly $17 million in fiscal year 2017-18, the department reports. “
Colorado Gazette
May 19, 2019
Read More“Suicide is the leading cause of death in jails. The jail suicide rate was 50 per 100,000 inmates, compared to the rate of 13 suicides per 100,000 people across the entire United States population, in 2014, the most recent year with available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Despite the empirical links between incarceration and suicide, an obstacle course of prisoner-unfriendly legislation and legal doctrines stand in the path of attempts at holding any individual person or institution accountable. Over the past two and a half decades, these legal barriers have made reforming prison conditions via litigation nearly impossible.“
Pacific Standard
May 14, 2019
Read More“No national studies have been done to show the prevalence of dyslexia among prisoners, but the little research that exists at the state level suggests the rates are quite high: A 2000 study of Texas prisoners found that about half were likely dyslexic, and about two-thirds struggled with reading comprehension. A 2014 study by the Education Department found that about a third of incarcerated people surveyed at 98 prisons struggled to pick out basic information while reading simple texts. Still, most prisons historically haven’t conducted widespread screenings for dyslexia—making it hard for prisoners with the reading disorder to make up lost ground while they’re behind bars.“
Mother Jones
April 30, 2019
Read More“According to mental health advocates, New Hampshire stands alone in the US in warehousing involuntarily committed mental health patients in prison. There have been efforts to reform the system for years now, but the state’s legislature never agreed on the millions of dollars needed to build a secure psychiatric facility, leaving the prison SPU as the only option for some patients.“
The Guardian
March 1, 2019
Read More“According to a study released in 2017 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly half the people held in jails suffer from some kind of mental illness, and more than a quarter have a severe condition, such as bipolar disorder. The same year, the bureau reported that about two-thirds of sentenced jail inmates suffer from drug addiction or dependency; that number was based on data from 2007-09, so it does not take into account the recent catastrophic rise of opioid addiction. That epidemic and other public-health emergencies, in jails across the country, are being aggravated by failings in the criminal-justice system.“
The New Yorker
February 25, 2019
Read More“The frequent delays, some of them lasting more than a month, trample the rights of mentally ill people accused of minor or serious crimes, as judges have ruled they cannot be left to languish in county jails. Since January 2018, court, jail and hospital officials collectively failed more than 200 times to get people out of jail and into treatment within the court-ordered seven-day timeline, The Oregonian/OregonLive found by analyzing data obtained under a public records request.“
The Oregonian
February 24, 2019
Read More“As the UK government plans to open four new prisons by 2020-21, it’s worth remembering how great an impact the architecture of such institutions can have on the mental health of inmates. Building design can offer therapeutic benefits for both psychiatric in-patients and prisoners. Or, it can result in vulnerable people – including those with severe mental illness – being held in custody, rather than receiving high quality, community-based care. “
The Conversation
February 6, 2019
Read More“All told, the board concluded that the deaths of approximately 50 prisoners statewide over the past five years could have been prevented with simple medical treatment. Officials with the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision say that even one such case is unacceptable, but that only around 0.02% of the total prison population of nearly 50,000 are referenced in the reports.“
NY Daily News
November 12, 2018
Read More“The original settlement had 25 provisions the corrections department needed to follow to provide proper care for the mentally ill. It included allowing eight hours of out-of-cell time each week to those in solitary confinement and enhanced treatment for the actively suicidal. A June report by an independent court-appointed monitor, Dr. Pablo Stewart, found the department was noncompliant with 18 of those terms. Stewart testified that mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement were ‘suffering immensely’.“
NPR Illinois
October 31, 2018
Read More“In Santa Clara County, incarcerated people, and a former undersheriff challenging six-term sheriff Laurie Smith, have turned conditions of confinement into a potent electoral issue.“
The Appeal
October 29, 2018
Read More"Many of the women, held in chaotic and unsanitary conditions, are not receiving proper medical treatment and are deteriorating into states of psychosis, Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights, wrote. Most of them face low-level misdemeanor charges and cannot post the $200 to $500 required for bail."
Atlanta Journal Constitution
August 30, 2018
Read More"The Virginian-Pilot tracked the cases of 404 people with mental illness who have died in America’s jails since 2010. The total number is likely much larger, but it's untraceable – what little information the federal government keeps on jail deaths does not accurately track the mental health of inmates."
The Virginian Pilot
August 23, 2018
Read More"Jail staff identify brain injury survivors by asking screening questions; those who test positive are then given a symptom questionnaire to pinpoint their cognitive deficits or neuropsychological impairments. The jail uses those results to help them learn coping mechanisms."
US News & World Report
August 22, 2018
Read More"Still, the jail is ill-prepared to be the state’s largest mental health care provider. A quarter of county inmates are on psychiatric medication, according to Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jason Spencer. There have been 15 suicides at the county lock-up since 2009, and staff intervene in an average of about 10 suicide attempts per month, according to jail data."
Houston Chronicle
August 17, 2018
Read More"The city’s efforts to close Rikers Island are commendable and long overdue. But as the de Blasio administration’s new blueprint to shutter the jail complex reflects, New York is still struggling, as are cities and states across America, to manage the many people with mental illness who are thrown in jails and prisons that, for all intents and purposes, have become psychiatric hospitals without the services."
New York Daily News
August 16, 2018
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