Impact of Mental Illness on the Criminal Justice System, Essay Example

The president of the American psychiatric Association in 2003 stated that the USA has  imprisoned a large number of people with mental illness.  Equally, studies have shown that jailed divergent programs have more positive outcome for the individual and generally result in lower cost than that of the  incarceration option.  It has equally been stated that the conditions of the prisons worsen the state of mental illness of the inmates and as such they spend much longer periods in Jail.   Once people have spent time in jail and later released they are further stigmatized in obtaining medical treatment because they now have a criminal record.

In 1998 it was reported that an estimated 283,000 prison  inmates suffer from mental illness problems.  By 2006 that number was set to increase to a staggering 1.25 million people and equally the prison population is five times greater than 1998.  Of these figures, it was reported that 73% of women in prison had mental illness problems and that incarceration will further damage them.  The prisons are considered to be woefully inadequate to treat inmates with mental illness problems.” “Asking prisons to treat people with serious mental illness is pushing round pegs into square holes,” said Fellner.[1] “People who suffer from mental illness need mental health interventions, not punishment for behavior that may be motivated by delusions and hallucinations.” (Fellner, 2006)

The illness of schizophrenia accounts for a great deal of the mentally ill patients that are placed into incarceration.  In 2002.  It was estimated that it was costing the USA 62.7 billion dollars per annum in direct healthcare drugs and treatment.  Over 2.2 million people were impacted and it was estimated that those in jail, suffering from mental illness, 6% were schizophrenic.  Most of the people admitted to prison with this illness had committed misdemeanors like trespassing.  The American psychological Association stated that one in five persons that are imprisoned or seriously mentally ill.  Most of the people diagnosed with schizophrenia tend to revolt between jail, hospitals and shelters.  In New York alone, 60% already hospitalized within a year.” Schizophrenia is a disease that typically begins in early adulthood; between the ages of 15 and 25. Men tend to get develop schizophrenia slightly earlier than women; whereas most males become ill between 16 and 25 years old, most females develop symptoms several years later, and the incidence in women is noticeably higher in women after age 30. The average age of onset is 18 in men and 25 in women. Schizophrenia onset is quite rare for people under 10 years of age, or over 40 years of age. The diagram below demonstrates the general “age of onset” trends for schizophrenia in men and women, from a representative study on the topic.” (Schizophrenia.com, 2004).

The situation in the UK is not much better that the USA and in fact the similarities are remarkable.  Women again coming in for the highest degree of mental illness problems. A study reported by BBC World news stated the following statistics”   Seventy-five per cent of female remand prisoners and 58% of male remand prisoners surveyed had symptoms of neuroses, such as depression, anxiety and phobias.  This was 13-20% higher than the levels for sentenced prisoners and more than four times higher than the national average. ” (BBC News, 1998).

Works Cited

BBC News. (1998, 6 26). Mental illness ‘rife’ in prison. Retrieved 5 10, 2010, from BBC World News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/120856.stm

Fellner, J. (2006, 9 5). U.S.: Number of Mentally Ill in Prisons Quadrupled . Retrieved 5 10, 2010, from Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled

Schizophrenia.com. (2004). Schizophrenia Facts and Statistics . Retrieved 5 10, 2010, from Schizophrenia.com: http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm

[1] Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program and co-author of a 2003 report, “Ill-Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness.”