Here are your disturbing prison facts for the day:
Percentage of American adults held in either prison or mental institutions in 1953 and today, respectively: 0.67, 0.68Percentage of these adults in 1953 who were in mental institutions: 75
Percentage today who are in prisons: 97
That's from the latest Harper's magazine. My first reaction to this bit of data was dismay: we've turned prisons into insane asylums, and are locking up people who should be treated for mental illness. These statistics make it clear that the boom in the prison industry is fed, in part, by the closing of our mental institutions. (Approximately 16 percent of all prison inmates are believed to have some sort of mental illness, which is three times the rate of the overall population.) And that's tragic: schizophrenics and other mentally ill patients need treatment, not just punishment. If you suffer from a mental illness, it's hard to imagine a worse place than prison. (A recent HRW report documented how one bi-polar prisoner was punished after engaging in self-mutilation. His offense? "Destroying state property".)
But I'm not convinced that these figures are all bad news. It's crucial to not romanticize the mental institutions of mid-century America. They weren't exactly enlightened treatment centers. (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest contains a germ of truth.) A huge range of patients were committed, from autistic adults to children with down syndrome to people with schizophrenic symptoms. Treatment was confinement. Nobody knew what else to do.
Of course, now we know better. We finally have a few somewhat effective tools to treat mental illness. And yet we are still failing to provide the necessary services, finding it easier to simply confine these poor patients. Although these statistics make it look as if there's been some big policy shift in the way we treat the mentally ill - they've been shifted from sanitariums to prisons - I think the reality is even more depressing. There's been no shift at all.
Comments (5)
"These statistics make it clear that the boom in the prison industry is fed, in part, by the closing of our mental institutions."
There's a lot riding on the "in part" in that sentence. Given 3 times as many in mental hospitals as in prison in 1953 (why 1953 unless someone was artificially setting up the comparison to come out as dramatically as possible?), the percentage would be a lot more than 16 percent if most of the mentally ill were shifted to prison. As I understand it, the large part of the growth in prison population is due to drug-related offenses, drugs that those with their own internal hallucinogens have no need for.
The issue is the difference between not-guilty due to insanity and guilty, but mentally ill. Prison isn't healthy for anyone. So shouldn't everyone be placed in a setting that is healthier than is the case now? I was glad that the young man who shot Reagan could be cared for outside of prison, but you know how many felt that was injustice, as if all of sudden legions of schizophrenics would then become assassins hoping to wind up in mental hospitals instead of prison. Then for people who weren't so crazy as to have been found not-guilty the cries of injustice would be even louder if they didn't go to prison or if so much money were spent on prisons that they became good places for everyone.
Prisoners are lucky to have the 8th amendment, or it would be even worse.
Posted by: DavidD | March 21, 2007 12:56 PM