Prison Abolition Movement - Mental Illness and Prison

Mental Illness and Prison

Many prison abolitionists take issue with the fact that prisons are used as a "default asylum" for many individuals with mental illness. Somewhere between 30 to 40% of mentally ill individuals in jail and in prison have had no criminal charges placed. One question that is often asked by some prison abolitionists is:

"why do governmental units choose to spend billions of dollars a year to concentrate people with serious illnesses in a system designed to punish intentional lawbreaking, when doing so matches neither the putative purposes of that system nor most effectively addresses the issues posed by that population?"

This question is often one of the major pieces of evidence that prison abolitionist claim highlights the depravity of the penal system. Many of these prison abolitionists often state that mentally ill offenders, violent and non-violent, should be treated in mental hospitals not prisons. By keeping the mentally ill in prisons they claim that rehabilitation cannot occur because prisons are not the correct environment to deal with deep seated psychological problems and facilitate rehabilitative practices. Individuals with mental illnesses that have led them to commit any crime have a much higher chance of committing suicide while in prison because of the lack of proper medical attention. The increased risk of suicide is said to be because there is much stigma around mental illness and lack of adequate treatments within hospitals. The whole point of the penal system is to rehabilitate and reform individuals who have willingly transgressed on the law. According to many prison abolitionists however, when mentally ill persons, often for reasons outside of their cognitive control, commit illegal acts prisons are not the best place for them to receive the help necessary for their rehabilitation. For many prison abolitionists, if for no other reason than the fact that mentally ill individuals will not be receiving the same potential for rehabilitation as the non-mentally ill prison population, prisons are considered to be unjust and therefore violate their Sixth Amendment and Fifth Amendment Rights, in the U.S., and their chance to rehabilitate and function outside of the prison. By violating individual’s rights to rehabilitation prison abolitionist see no reason for prisons to exist and offers just one more reason people with the movement demand for the abolition of prisons. In America, by violating an individual's rights as a citizen prison abolitionist see no reason for prisons to exist and, again, offers another reason people within the movement demand for the abolition of prisons.