The Insanity of Incarceration and the Maddening Reentry Process: A Call for Change and Justice for Males with Mental Illness in United States Prisoners
![handle is hein.journals/geojpovlp13 and id is 363 raw text is: Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy
Volume XIII, Number 2, Summer 2006
POLICY PERSPECTIVE
The Insanity of Incarceration and the Maddening
Reentry Process: A Call for Change and Justice for
Males with Mental Illness in United States Prisons
Bonnie J. Sultan*
INTRODUCTION
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimated at midyear 1999 that
179,200 people in state correctional facilities and 7,900 people in the federal
system were living with mental illness;' in 2003, Human Rights Watch estimated
the number of persons with mental illness living in prison as somewhere between
two and three hundred thousand:2
An estimated seventy thousand [prisoners] are psychotic on any given day ....
Many seriously ill prisoners receive little or no meaningful treatment. They are
neglected, accused of malingering, treated as disciplinary problems .... In the
United States, there are three times more mentally ill people in prisons than in
mental health hospitals, and prisoners have rates of mental illness that are two
to four times greater than rates of members of the general public.3
People entering the United States correctional system with pre-existing mental
illness are in great need of attention and assistance. The incarceration of this
population without access to mental health treatment inside of correctional
facilities is truly punishing those who are sick. Treating mental illness as a crime
is perhaps the greatest injustice of the United States criminal justice system. By
* M.A., The George Washington University; Training and Technical Assistance Associate, Family
Justice. Family Justice partners with government agencies, community-based organizations and the
private sector to tap the unique strengths of families and neighborhoods in order to break cycles of
involvement in the criminal justice system. This Article was written while the author was serving as the
Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Technical Assistance Center Coordinator at The National Alliance on
Mental Illness (NAMI).
1. PAULA M. DrrrON, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, MENTAL HEALTH AND
TREATMENT OF INMATES AND PROBATIONERS 3 (1999), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.govlbjs/pub/pdf/
mhtip.pdf.
2. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ILL-EQuIPPED: U.S. PRISONS AND OFFENDERS wrrIH MENTAL ILLNESS 1
(2003) [hereinafter ILL-EQuIPPED], available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa003/usalOO3.pdf.
3. Id.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/geojpovlp13&div=22&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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