In Chicago’s Cook County jail system, the proportion of its 6,000 prisoners with mental illness has increased to 33 percent. “It’s unpleasant, it’s loud, it’s claustrophobic,” she said of units that house mentally ill prisoners.Īs a result, large urban jail systems in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City are now the largest psychiatric care providers in the nation. prisoners suffer from a mental illness, since the lack of other treatment options means they are more likely to end up behind bars. Alisa Roth, author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, estimates that half of U.S. During that same period of time, the population of institutionalized mental patients shrank by 90 percent to under 60,000. incarceration rate more than tripled, and around 2.2 million people are currently incarcerated nationwide. It happens so often that correctional facilities have become the de facto source for mental health services.įrom the 1960s to the present the U.S. In fact, mentally ill Americans are often denied the treatment they need and instead end up in prisons and jails.
Author Ken Kasey wrote a work of fiction about a prisoner who was sent to a mental hospital.
Since the 1962 publication of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a mirror image of the best-selling novel’s plot has played out in U.S. Share: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on G+ Share with email
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