American Ignominy: The Incarceration of the Mentally Ill

Abstract

Prisons and jails have become the de facto psychiatric hospitals of the twenty-first century. In the wake of deinstitutionalization, as mental healthcare transitioned to a community-based model, many patients with mental illness found themselves incarcerated rather than hospitalized. Strict drug laws combined with the current opioid epidemic are now forcing the government to consider treatment over punishment, lest the prison populations continue to swell. It is time to strongly consider using the involuntary commitment for severe cases of substance abuse if the patient is unwilling to undergo rehabilitation. Refusing to wait for the federal government to act, cities and states around the nation have begun to experiment with novel solutions to these issues, working within the framework of the prison system to achieve better outcomes.