How the Criminal Justice System Handles Individuals with Mental Illness
Introduction
About 1.26 million inmates are mentally ill, standing for 45% of federal criminals, 56% of state offenders and 64% of jail inmates (Douglas & Lurigio, 2014). While mentally ill delinquents comprise of 5-7% of the general population, 30% of the convicts of crimes has some types of identifiable mental illness, and almost half of the evils of addiction are consigned by those with a psychological problem.
Studies reveal that people with severe mental illnesses have a depressing impact on the criminal justice system (Etter, Birzer, & Fields, 2008). Confinements, as well as prisons, have issues with congestion to some extent as a result of the number of people with relentless mental illness under custody. The workforce, as well as officers of the corrections, are not appropriately prepared or educated to deal with the demand and care that mentally ill inmates necessitate. Representatives of law enforcement habitually tend to be the first people to act in response to apprehensions regarding mental illness yet they are not mental health specialists and usually are not familiar with the best position of the way of handling the offenders, thus having them congested in jails as well as prisons. This paper aims to demonstrate that the mentally ill population in the criminal justice systems has been failed when it comes to the fortification of discrimination and receipt of proper care.
Before the 1960s, people who were mentally ill were placed in mental institutions as a means to defend the society and for them too (Brandt, 2012). Pharmaceutical firms started to build up new drug treatments in 1960 that left pledges of remedies or at least to assist people to deal with life with mental illnesses. Institutions gradually started becoming outdated, and outpatient care was the favored modern way of dealing with the mentally ill. However, two most essential restrictions were not anticipated. The limitations included lack of sufficient financial support for the social health processes and the rise of the mental patients association that permitted patients the right to prefer to acknowledge or snub treatment.
The reduction of operable mental institutions has led to the potential for a decline in unsafe experiences between police force agents with mentally ill persons. The patients have been freed into the community with no proper support, and some of them do not receive the appropriate outpatient care crucial for the management of their diseases. This fact limits the efficiency of community-based cure (Douglas & Lurigio, 2014).
Imprisoning people with mental illnesses draws on criminal justice assets, damaging the system and placing people in a background that were not intended to deal with mental health issues. As soon as a person with mental illness is positioned in a penitentiary or confinement, they are more likely to become victims of aggression given that they are more aggressive naturally and are considered easy targets by persons with no mental illnesses. People with mental illnesses are always labeled as abnormal or behaving in deceitful ways. Due to this label, it is hard for them to be regarded as victims. Imprisoned criminals with mental illnesses however become victims due to a lack of training of the correction institutions regarding the persons with mental illnesses. The mental ill persons time and again lack the basic resources to offer appropriate treatment or rehabilitation (Douglas & Lurigio, 2014). These people are also labeled as substance abusers, regularly dispossessed and victims of their own death. For instance, women who are mentally ill are time after time more likely to be aggressively and sexually persecuted and there is a large number who are imprisoned. People with mental illnesses are more likely to be wounded when fighting for the duration of incarceration as compared to those not mentally ill. In the case of men who are mentally ill, they are more likely to be beaten as victims of personal theft.
A study by Sims (2009) looked at the management of mental illness in the United States prisons and jails through a collection of peer-reviewed research. Sims emphasized that the criminal justice system is at present failing to achieve any of its swift objectives of reprimand when inmates suffer from harsh mental illness. One among the studies predicted that about 15% of the prisoners in the United States as of the year 2004 experienced from severe mental disorders like schizophrenia, schizo-affective mayhem, bipolar confusion and significant depression. Among the high figure of prisoners with mental health troubles and diseases, only 17% of neighboring jail prisoners, 24% of national prisoners and 34% of state prisoners received psychological health cure after admission (Gur, 2010). As a result of the little figures on mental health care issues, the justice system appears to be malfunctioning in dealing with mental health issues within the system.
Annually in the United States, about one and half million criminals with mental illnesses are placed on audition. There are conventional audition agencies. Habitually, people with mental illnesses will be set with an audition officer that specializes in working with probationers with mental illness. Individuals under audition are known to experience critical mental diseases and are compelled to take part in mental health management as a condition of their trial. Consequently, substantial differences between personally and traditional POs vary and timing strategies are available to observe and enforce treatment conformity (Reuland, 2010).
Middle schools as well as high schools have become besieged by the challenge of identifying and treating students with mental illness given that the managers of the schools have called upon law enforcement staff, principally school resources representatives to act in response to adolescents with mental illness conditions. Youths suffering mental illness recurrently interrelate with law enforcement officers as a result of the intimidating, maladaptive ad stressful character of their signs. Law enforcement officers are offered the authority to act and get involved in mental associated occurrences and help to establish where they ought to be sent. In this responsibility the police officers turn out to be most important caretakers for accessing mental health services in the society (Etter, Birzer, & Fields, 2008). In reality, the police are however to a great extent controlled in their preferences for care, given that mental health experts are frequently reluctant or powerless to acknowledge law enforcement set off mental health recommendations. Studies suggest that minorities might not experience a smaller amount mental of illness but their sign appearance, confidence as well as use of mental health services might be less as compared to the Caucasians and that these trends have persisted over time.
A Case Decided By the United States Supreme Court
On 19th June in 2017, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Alabama death-row inmate James Edmond McWilliams after realizing that he was denied his legitimate privileges to the help of a mental-health specialist in assessment, organizing and presenting his security. The case was sent back to the Eleventh Circuit to make a decision whether the mistake had significant and harmful effects on his decree measures. The court evidently ascertained that a defendant has to obtain the help of a mental health specialist who is sufficiently accessible to the defense as well as sovereignty from the trial to assist efficiently in appraisal, preparation, and staging of protection.
The inmate had a history of brutal and numerous head wounds and was convicted of theft, rape, and assassination of a store clerk. Before the hearing of his case, his advocate had asked the court for specialist mental health support to carry out a neuropsychological as well as neurological assessment. The court gave advocates request but hired an expert who was a coworker to the two specialists presented by the state, and the justification counsel was given no chance to discuss with the expert. The expert prepared evidence and distributed it to the justification advocate only two days before the sentencing, with duplicates concurrently provided to the tribunal judge. Given that McWilliams advocate had no adequate opportunity to assess the expert's account and analysis, he asked for a continuation of the sentencing hearing but was deprived.
The above case is n accordance with the 1985 court’s decision that instituted that if mental health is a significant issue attest, a needy defendant has a legitimate right to a specialist to aid in assessment, arrangement, and presentation of the justification. The supplicant, in this case, alleged that he was deprived of his liberty to free specialist help in preparing for his capital verdict hearing. The U.S Court Of Appeals for Eleventh Circuit denied his assistance on this allege on the realization that Alabama provided the supplicant access to knowledgeable Psychiatrist (Reuland, 2010).
Most criminal justice system authorities have claimed that their organizations deal with the mentally ill criminal’s in different ways as compared to the means they deal with those who do not have mental issues. Mentally ill offenders are not supposed to request extraordinary regards in sentencing but require diverse ones in the case of management and administration. Correction branches can get the offenders associated with all the essential services only when their insurances are set up. For instance, they offer Behavioral Health service to the mentally ill. In case the mentally ill is very indicative, then they are located in the mental health divisions. Otherwise, if they have mental health issues, they make efforts to have the criminals occasionally scrutinized in appointments and prescription. However, nearly all units take them off expensive mental health drugs and injectable medicine and substitute them with a standard product that appears to be less successful (Reuland, 2010). Most of the mentally ill criminals who are imprisoned return to their homes with poorer health as compared to their time of admission.
As in the above case study, for petitioners to be entitled to mental health courts, they are required to plead accountable to a criminal offense after which they are placed on trial with a minimum if time. The petitioner is as well required to identify with reading and writing as well as having a capacity to understand the information given to them. Usually as soon as a criminal is released from jail or a detention center on a Friday, they do not meet with their probation officer until the following Monday (Sarteschi & Vaughn, 2013). Frequently the criminal is on the streets and has very minute property. It takes the experimentation officer extensive effort to get them linked with assets in the society like accommodation, provisions, clothes, mental health, and medical services, prescription and substance abuse cure. If they are lucky to be on Social Security Disability Insurance and have Medicaid or Medicare that procedure is regularly fairly fast.
In detention centers, mental health care is not offered by the units of corrections directly but through a considerable business service providers who apply to all health care for the state. The corporate service provider usually owes a responsibility to its stakeholders to keep its expenses down. This makes it a continuous effort to receive sufficient mental health care in prisons. Additionally, when a mentally ill person is in a secure unit, they most likely decline to take their medicines. At times this happens since they suffer side effects they don’t like with apprehension of how the institutions would judge them. They also think that by declining to continue with their medication, they might become symptomatic and the jail would not substitute them for treatment programs (Sarteschi & Vaughn, 2013). When the corrections caregivers are asked if they feel that the mentally ill are given the appropriate care and cure they require as a result of the illness, they assert that they do not think that there are sufficient resources to cover a suitable number offenders with mental illness. Treatment is possible for the majority criminal behavior but might not be recommendable for the community.
Conclusion
Jails and prisons are congested and lack the necessary finances to offer adequate treatment to inmates with mental illness. Treatment is possible for criminals suffering mental illness. However, the mentally ill require emotional, cognitive and conduct therapies and prescription as the desire to progress and become accountable and participatory members in the society. Mental health courts act as the most optimistic and effectual way of putting off recidivism when the curriculum is followed. All participants in mental health have the mental health issues dealt with under the mental health court. They are examined on their medication and thoughts which progressively facilitates appropriate adjustments to medicines in an essential way.
Knowledge is an authority in every feature of the individual life. The more criminal justice system becomes acquainted with and appreciates the mentally ill, the more they will be able to lend a hand and take care of them in a manner that is beneficial to both. Most mental illnesses never end, and people who live with this yoke have to agree to a lifespan of treat met and prescription if they want to stay out of the criminal justice system. To reduce the impact that the criminal justice systems and the mentally ill have on one another, it would be helpful to educate all experts involved and have state authorization mental illness awareness courses. Law enforcement, management providers, court detectives, and correctional experts all need to collaborate. This teamwork will optimistically benefit the communities.
References
Brandt, A. S. (2012). Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System: A Literature Review. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 51(8), 541-558. doi:10.1080/10509674.2012.693902
Douglas, A. V., & Lurigio, A. J. (2014). Juvenile Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs): A Qualitative Description of Current Programs. Police Journal, 87(2), 114-125. doi:10.1350/pojo.2014.87.1.534
Etter, G. W., Birzer, M. L., & Fields, J. (2008). The jail as a dumping ground: the incidental incarceration of mentally ill individuals. Criminal Justice Studies, 21(1), 79-89. doi:10.1080/14786010801972738
Gur, O. M. (2010). Persons with Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System: Police Interventions to Prevent Violence and Criminalization. Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 10(1/2), 220-240. doi:10.1080/15332581003799752
Reuland, M. (2010). Tailoring the police response to people with mental illness to community characteristics in the USA. Police Practice & Research, 11(4), 315-329. doi: 10.1080/15614261003701723
Sarteschi, C. M., & Vaughn, M. G. (2013). Recent Developments In Mental Health Courts: What Have We Learned?Journal of Forensic Social Work, 3(1), 34-55. doi:10.1080/1936928X.2013.837416
