By Sabiha Tafader
There are many mentally ill people in the United States who are incarcerated in prisons. Sometimes they are accused of offenses even when they only committed a minor crime. The conditions which they must endure as prisoners include life inside a cage with limited healthcare.
In the United States there are more than three times the number of seriously mentally ill individuals in prison, than in hospitals. Some may argue that there are not enough mental hospitals equipped to house and treat those who are considered “criminally insane”. However, no matter the reasons, this lack of care is an injustice. Being mentally ill in prison results in injustice also because many prisoners are being placed in prison without adequate consideration of their medical background or state of mind at the time of the crime.
Some argue that prisons do not have the ability to provide therapeutic care for all their mentally-ill prisoners. These people claim that mentally-ill prisoners end up in jail because they are committing crimes in the society which makes other citizens feel threatened, hence leading to an arrest and preventive incarceration. But if the intended purpose of prison is prisoner reform or rehabilitation, shouldn’t special places and services exist specifically to rehabilitate or “ cure” the mentally ill?
Studies have accused the United States of incarcerating a greater percentage of its citizens—many of which suffer from psychological issues—than most other Western nations. Cutbacks in public health programs offering free or affordable mental health treatments only increase the possibility that mentally unstable people will end up in prison.
This logic applies to people of every race, gender and social class. But the mentally afflicted poor, who have less access to good medical care, are particularly in danger of being jailed because of their illness.
Human rights organizations have complained that too often prisons unofficially become warehouses for the poor and other socially marginalized groups. In Just Mercy (published by Spiegel & Grau/Random House in October of 2014), author Bryan Stevenson, says that in the United States there are hundreds of thousands of poor and mentally ill people in prison.
“Most overcrowded prisons don’t have the capacity to provide care and treatment to the mentally ill,” says Stevenson on page 188. He asserts that many disabled people are suffering because they are locked up in prison with little to no treatment. Judges and defense lawyers have failed to recognize the special needs of the mentally disabled, leading to ever higher rates of mentally ill prisoners. In short, entering the U.S. justice system while being mentally ill or poor frequently results in injustice.
Stevenson further claims, “The inability of many poor women to get healthcare…has been serious problem in this country for decades,” (Stevenson p. 233). This includes prenatal care, the absence of which increases the chance that more babies will be born suffering from mental and physical problems that might have been prevented.
Women accused of crimes who were too mentally disturbed to communicate properly with lawyers and judges never received enough help to avoid inaccurate convictions. Such injustice imposed upon those who are financially and mentally disadvantaged is a serious issue that needs to be solved.
One example given is of a woman named Lee who gave birth to a stillborn baby. “Lee was arrested and charged with capital murder [because] new information led to the prosecutor to ask for a capital trial,” Stevenson argues on page 233, “… and, potentially, the death penalty.” In the United States there are evidently many women who were sent to prison due to false accusations. In this case, the unexplained death of Lee’s baby resulted in her being charged with capital murder.
Mentally ill people often do not have the conscious intention to cause harm. Just Mercy, supports this theory by telling us that a black veteran, Herbert Richardson, received the death penalty but later was found to have had mental issues which his lawyer failed to mention to the court.
“During the trial,” Stevenson writes on page 77, “ the appointed defense lawyer presented no evidence about Herbert’s background.” In short, Herbert had mental issues, but because his defense lawyer did not mention Herbert’s background and what he had been going through, Herbert’s sentencing to death by the law became a must. Stevenson further points out on page 188 that: “Over 50 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States have a diagnosed mental illness.” Such a high number of mentally ill people in prison is shocking and can’t help but negatively impact all the prisoners who have to share space and resources with them.
People of all ages, genders, and races who have mental issues are usually not very aware of their surroundings, so locking them up in jail can be additionally cruel as well as unfair, especially when someone commits a minor crime. Trina Garnett had intellectual disabilities and other troubles at a young age, as well as emotional and mental problems due to the desperate circumstances she experienced growing up. In Just Mercy, we discover that under Pennsylvania law, the judge could not consider Trina’s age, mental illness, poverty, or the abuse she had suffered. Because of Trina’s mental disabilities she failed to receive justice because her lawyer failed her by not challenging the state’s decision to make her stand trial for second-degree murder. Moreover adds Stevenson, “ to completely disregard a person’s disability would be unfair in evaluating what degree of culpability to assign and what sentence to impose.”(Stevenson p. 199).
I believe no mentally ill “criminal” should be given the death penalty in the first place. Trina was only fourteen when she was convicted of second degree murder, and of course at this young age the mind is not fully developed yet. But the fact that she was condemned to mandatory life imprisonment shows nothing but a judicial abuse of mentally ill prisoners.
Overall, I feel more attention needs to be paid to how mentally ill prisoners being treated in prison. The lack of therapeutic treatment that these people receive is unbearable, and most importantly, the fact that many mentally ill people are sentenced to life imprisonment keeps them cruelly isolated from human contact as well as from the outside world. Prison should not be a place for people with mental illness, hence we must end incarcerating them. We need better laws protecting the mentally ill when they end up in court, and better public health programs to catch and treat mental problems before they result in a person’s incarceration.