Prisons are the ‘new asylums’ of the US

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/prisons-are-the-new-asylums-the-us?cid=sm_facebook

By Meredith Clark
April 8, 2014

America’s prisons house ten times more people with mental illnesses than its hospitals, according to a new report.

The report, released Tuesday by the Treatment Advocacy Center, found that state prisons and county jails house approximately 356,268 people with mental illnesses, while state mental hospitals hold only 35,000. The disparity is also a nationwide problem – only six states have psychiatric hospitals with more people in them than a prisons or jail.

Prisons, according to the report, have become the nation’s “new asylums.” The number of beds available at hospitals for mental health patients has been dropping for decades. And as the population of incarcerated people has exploded, so has the number of people with serious problems. A 2012 report, also by TAC, found that state mental health agencies cut nearly 10% of their available beds between 2009 and 2012.

The report provided a breakdown of the number of mentally ill prisoners in each state’s correctional facilities, the laws governing treatment, and examples of how inmates are treated. Among others, they include a Mississippi prison designed for mentally ill inmates, overrun by rats, where “some prisoners capture the rats, put them on makeshift leashes, and sell them as pets to other inmates. There was also a case in which a schizophrenic man spent 13 of 15 of his years in prison in solitary confinement.

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