Why Our Prisons Are Making The Mental Health Crisis Worse

"There are now ten times more individuals with serious mental illness in prisons and jails than there are in mental institutions, according to a new report yesterday from the Treatment Advocacy Center. This is a jarring statistic, reinforcing the wisdom that prisons and jails have become de facto asylums, with as many mentally ill individuals in prisons as there were in asylums decades ago..."

Prisons are in many ways even less suited to treat the mentally ill than the asylums of a prior era, meaning mentally ill ... Read more