Introduction
The number of mentally ill offenders in American jails continues to grow every year. The Bureau of Justice estimates that approximately 16% of incarcerated persons have been diagnosed with active symptoms of severe mental illness, and about 75% of these people have related drugs and alcohol use disorder ("Mental Health and Criminal Justice", 2000). The presence of mentally ill defendants in the criminal justice system has significant costs on the system and harm on these defendants. It is almost impossible to care for these prison populations; thus, the mental health courts system advocates for the removal of mentally ill defendants from the criminal justice system prisons and jails and recommends them to be placed in mental health correction facilities where they can receive the kind of care needed.
Services Provided By Mental Health Courts
The Mental Health Courts are alternatives to the traditional criminal justice institutions and service mentally ill prison populations. These courts only handle cases involving mentally unstable individuals and provide judicial supervision, community-based mental health treatment, and provide alternative sentences to serious mentally ill delinquents besides incarceration (Argosy University, 2013). A mental health court orders services for prison populations that need defendant psychotherapy treatment, behavioral psychoanalysis, comprehensive support from family and friends, and psychiatric assessments in the presence of medication staff.
Benefits to Prisoners.
The US Department of Justice states that there are over 250,000 mentally ill individuals that are imprisoned in America, and the federal prisons constitute about 8-17% of this inmate population (Argosy University, 2013). These prisoners may profit from mental health court services by agreeing to participate and comply with the mental health courts’ program and regulations. Prisoners suffering from mental health issues do not get the right kind of help while sitting in federal prisons. Therefore, they should apply to mental health prisons where they can receive proper medical interventions and effective treatments. Mental health courts ensure that offenders reduce recidivism, improve their mental health conditions, and reduce prison sentences. Mental health advocates believe that barriers to accessing mental health services and issues with early interventions cause mentally ill persons to be incarcerated through the penal system rather than to be instituted in psychiatric facilities.
How Do These Services Compare With The One Already Available Through The Existing Criminal Justice System?
The mental health court services do not compare with the existing criminal justice system because the latter does not use the inmate rehabilitation scheme. The conventional criminal justice system does not prioritize mental health programs and instead imposes considerable costs and harm to the mentally unstable prisoners ("Position Statement 53: Mental Health Courts", 2016). Traditional jail systems are not equipped to handle offenders that have mental health issues, and the few that do, have significant barriers that prevent the mentally ill populations from accessing those services. These obstacles may come in the form of underfunding of the prison system, understaffing or failure to employ unique prison staff well-equipped in handling mentally ill prison populations. As a result, positive recidivism rates are high, and the mentally ill often find themselves indulging in criminal activities due to reduced or no access to correctional facilities and services.
Do Research Findings Support The Establishment Of More Mental Health Service Programs To Imprison Mentally Ill Populations?
Research findings purport that more mental health service programs should be established to help mentally ill offenders and also because the conventional criminal justice system’s mental health care facilities are not functional due to inadequate funding. The goal of prisons and correctional facilities is to reduce recidivism, hence instituting mental health services to help and treat the mentally ill will be in support of this primary objective. The penal system should provide the right conditions which create an opportunity for mentally sick delinquents to receive the right help and treatment, far from incarceration which often leads to recidivism. The best way to do this it to establish more mental health service programs and equip jails and prison systems with these programs.
What Can Be Done To Improve These Services Further?
Many steps are being taken by the perpetuators of the criminal justice system and the mental health and human services fields in trying to address the issue of incarceration of mentally ill populations in what is known as ‘criminalization of the mentally ill.’ Mental health courts are still new to the justice and penal system and are making significant strides in improving mental health services and reducing incarceration of mentally unstable prison populations. It is imperative that the criminal justice system should integrate and collaborate with the mental health courts to achieve more positive results and enable these mental health facilities to operate more efficiently. Institutional barriers that prevent mentally ill prison individuals from accessing the right kind of care and treatment should also be addressed adequately to ensure that these patients do not retrogress to severe mental illness. This can be done by funding mental health programs in these prisons, or transferring mentally ill people to special care facilities where they can recuperate under proper supervision.
Conclusion
Cases of mentally ill offenders are special and should be directed to the mental health courts because the criminal justice system is incapable of handling such cases. Many issues lie in the way of equipping conventional penal systems to handle mentally ill offenders. Therefore, all states in the country should facilitate the establishment of these special facilities so that mentally ill offenders can access the right services and treatment to help them gain progressive recovery. It is ostensible that mentally ill offenders can be helped and returned to normal if accorded the right kind of therapy and care.
References
Argosy University (2013). Martin. Introduction to Human Services Lecture Notes.
Mental Health and Criminal Justice. (2000). Hhs.gov. Retrieved 27 April 2016, from http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t000921a.html
Position Statement 53: Mental Health Courts. (2016). Mental Health America. Retrieved 27 April 2016, from http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/positions/mental-health-courts
