Incarcerated: Mental Illness

When he was 15, he admitted that he heard voices in his head. Psychiatrists first diagnosed him with psychosis. Later, he would be diagnosed with schizophrenia while in prison.

A 2006 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that over half of all jail and prison inmates have mental health issues; an estimated 1.25 million suffered from mental illness, over four times the number in 1998.  

Research suggests that people with mental illness are overrepresented in the criminal justice system by rates of two to four times the normal population. The severity of these illnesses vary, but advocates say that one factor remains steady: with proper treatment, many of these incarcerations could have been avoided.

“Most people [with mental illness] by far are incarcerated because of very minor crimes that are preventable,” says Bob Bernstein, the Executive Director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “People are homeless for reasons that shouldn’t occur, people don’t have basic treatment for reasons that shouldn’t occur and they get into trouble because of crimes of survival.”

Bernstein blames these high rates on a lack of community mental health services. In the past three years, $4.35 billion in funding for mental health services has been cut from state budgets across the nation, according to a recent report. Because of the cuts, treatment centers have had to trim services and turn away patients. 

State hospitals have also been forced to reduce services. A report by the Treatment Advocacy Center even found that there are more people with severe mental illness in prisons and jails than in hospitals.

Eric Balaban, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said that mentally ill people who have contact with the criminal justice system are too often incarcerated while awaiting trial, rather than sent to hospitals or treatment centers.

“There has been a very disturbing recent trend to keep them in jails and not send them to a hospital which is done as a money saving measure,” said Balaban. “They’re not receiving the appropriate level of care.”

Once people with mental illness are incarcerated, Bazleon’s Bernstein says, it becomes a tough cycle to break.  “Most people are there for minor crimes but then they deteriorate,” he explains. “They can’t follow the rules there and so they stay a long time, and they become difficult to release.”

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, most inmates with mental illness don’t receive treatment while in prison.