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The importance of incarceration
Importance Of Imprisonment
Importance of prison
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Inmate Health Care
Taxpayers pay for so many things like law enforcement, construction work, fire fighter services, and etc. Part of what they pay every year goes to the medical department in jails and prisons. Taxpayers should not pay for the health care of inmates. They pay for incurable medical conditions. They should not pay for inmates with mental illness. Lastly, taxpayers should not pay for their oral needs. They have so much to worry about; inmates and their needs should be the last thing they should worry about. They should not pay for incurable medical conditions, mental illnesses, or oral care.
Some inmates have incurable conditions. Troy Reid who had high blood pressure and kidney problems was one (Mendelssohn. p. 295). July of 2007 Reid began to get treated for his kidneys that were shutting down (Mendelssohn. p. 295). Three times a week he would get a kidney dialysis but on April of 2008 he died (Mendelssohn. p. 295). He grown tired of the treatments and decided to die (Mendelssohn. p. 295). From July 2007 to April 2008 taxpayers paid for Reid’s treatments. For some people the treatments that Reid had no point and was just a waste. If inmates that have incurable diseases like Reid’s should not be in prison or jail. They should be released and they them self should pay for the treatment they seek. A lot of money was wasted on Reid; this is a reason they should not pay for inmate health care.
There are some inmates in jails and prisons that have a mental illness. It has been estimated that 10% to 16% of at adults in U.S prisons and jails have some kind of a mental illness (Mackain and Messer. p.89). It was calculated that 10% of male and 18% of females have a serious mental disorder (Mackain and Messer. p.89)...
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...are Program For Inmates With A Chronic Mental Illness.” Jour of Forensic Psychology Proctice 4.2. (2004): 87-100. Academic Search Complete. Web 5 May 2014
Manahan, James H., and Vicki Quade. “Don’t Do The Crime If You Can’t Pay For Your
Cell.” Human Rights 17.2. (1990): 6. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 May 2014.
Mondelsohn, Daniel R.H. “The Right To Refuse: Should Prison Inmates Be Allowed To
Discontinue Treatment Fox Incurable, Noncomunicable Medical Conditions?” Maryland Law Review 71.1. (2011): 295-338. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 May 2014.
Ross, Michael W., Alison Liebling, and Sarah Tait. “The Relationships of Prison Climate
To Health Service In Correctional Evironments: Inmates Health Care Measurement, Satisfaction and Access In Prisons.” Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 50.3. (2011): 262-274. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 May 2014.
Jails as Mental Hospitals. A joint report of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and
As we know the federal government spends a large portion of our budget on the maintaining of prisons. During the 2011 fiscal year it cost nearly $29,000 to house a prisoner in a state penitentiary per year as stated by the Federal Register. The funds that are estimated to keep a prison running end up running over the prediction causing them go over budget. We can account for this because according to The Price of Prisons|Oklahoma on Vera.org, here in the state of Oklahoma the Oklahoma Department of Corrections called for $441.8 million taxpayer dollars in the 2010 fiscal year. The actual cost for the maintenance of the prisons called for $453.4 million taxpayer dollars. This is about $11.6 million taxpayer dollars over the set budget for the year. This proves that there are too many things that need to be taken care of in these facilities. Much of the money went to paying employee benefits and to capital costs which is also stated in this article. Instead of using the money to pay for employee benefits they should be using it to pay for what the inmates need. This causes a strain on citizens because they are obligated into paying more taxes. The money being used on prison employee benefits could be going to other programs such as education and Social Security which would benefit more
For a variety of reasons, many inmates do not seek diagnosis or treatment for illness before arriving to prison or jail. Because inmates are literally a “captive” audience, it is vastly more efficient and effective to screen and treat them while incarcerated than to conduct extensive outreach in local communities. (AIDS Weekly. 1998) Uninfected prisoners have sued the authorities for failing to test and segregate. In a recently reported case, Cameron v. Metcuz 705 F. Supp 454 (N.D. Ind 1989), an uninfected plaintiff prisoner sued prison authorities for failing to segregate a known infected prisoner with a violent history who had bitten the plaintiff. In that case, the court found that the authorities’ failure to segregate a known infected prisoner with a violent history did not amount to gross negligence or reckless indifference to the prisoner who was bitten. (Mead. Vol. 15 no. 5, pp. 197-9).
Statistics. Today, about 20 percent of prison inmates have some sort of serious mental illness. According to a 2015 study conducted by the Urban Institute, it is estimated that 56 percent of state prisoners, 45 percent of federal prisoners, and 64 percent of jail inmates have one or more type of mental disorder. Furthermore, it is said that 1 out of every 20 persons that are being kept behind bars, will be suffering from a mental illness. In essence,the most common mental
While, equality of healthcare provision in America continues to be a leading topic of debate. Healthcare rights for incarcerated persons are largely absent from this national conversation. Healthcare affordability and accessibility to quality treatment, medicine and doctors remains a priority across all ages, races, genders and political parties. Because “the state” is given the power of autonomy from the provision of law under the federal government, it should be the responsibility of “the state” to provide adequate healthcare services and treatment to persons who are incarcerated.
I totally agreed with John because from what I see in the world right now, the world is getting more and more corrupted; not just adults are doing drugs and committing crimes but also young teenagers. According to an online article Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016 written by Peter Wagner, from the prison data of 2016, Wagner states that “ almost half a million people are locked up because of a drug offense”. Therefore , due drug offense in the United State, that’s why the prison population in the United State is so high. As for poor health care system, in the book Correctional Health Care: Guideline for the Management of an Adequate Delivery, It proves that jail in the United State have the worst health care system. In two- third of the jails, the only medical facility within the jail itself is first aid. On the regular basic, physicians were not available even on an on call basis. Also resources for handling medical issues are limited. So there is not much prisoners can do if they get injured or hurt. As for living condition in prison, jails and prisons lacks the facilities necessary to handle inmate’s health care needs and not only that the living conditions are very poor and cramp. Referring back to the video that John Oliver discuss, when the solitary confinement ask the prison director a question, with long thoughts he finally says, “ It’s ten by seven”. Comparing that to a ping pong table like John said, it’s not that
Thousands of people statewide are in prisons, all for different reasons. However, the amount of mental illness within prisons seems to go unaddressed and ignored throughout the country. This is a serious problem, and the therapy/rehabilitation that prison systems have do not always help those who are mentally ill. Prison involvement itself can contribute to increased suicide (Hills, Holly). One ‘therapy’ that has increased throughout the years has been the use of solitary confinement, which has many negative effects on the inmates. When an inmate has a current mental illness, prior to entering into the prison, and it goes undiagnosed and untreated, the illness can just be worsened and aggravated.
were males, 7221, and the rest 564 were females. In order to see if the participates had any sort of mental illness they looked at self reported treatment, related to mental health (Biltz). The results of this study found that the amount of inmates that participating in this study had a disproportionally number of inmates with mental healthy that were physically victimized. According to this study prisons are a violent and unsafe place for people who suffer from mental illness (Biltz). Male inmates who suffered from any form of mental illness were nearly 1.6 times more likely to be physically victimized while in prison. Females inmates who had a mental illness were even more likely to suffer from physical victimization, they were nearly 2 times more likely than male inmates with mental illness (Blitz). Inmates that were African Americans and Hispanics were more likely to be physically victimized either by inmates or staff.
Prior to taking this course, I generally believed that people were rightly in prison due to their actions. Now, I have become aware of the discrepancies and flaws within the Criminal Justice system. One of the biggest discrepancies aside from the imprisonment rate between black and white men, is mental illness. Something I wished we covered more in class. The conversation about mental illness is one that we are just recently beginning to have. For quite a while, mental illness was not something people talked about publicly. This conversation has a shorter history in American prisons. Throughout the semester I have read articles regarding the Criminal Justice system and mental illness in the United States. Below I will attempt to describe how the Criminal Justice system fails when they are encountered by people with mental illnesses.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will explore the increasing incarceration rate of the mentally ill in the jails and prisons of the United States, the lack of medical services available to the mentally ill, the roles of the police, the correctional officers and the community and the revolving door phenomenon (Soderstrom, 2007). It will also review some of the existing and present policies that have been ineffective and present new policies that can be effective with the proper resources and training. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that the criminalization of the mentally ill has become a public health problem and that our policy should focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
According to a study done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2005, roughly half of all jail and prison inmates in America suffer mental health problems. (James, et al. 2006) The prevalence of mental illness in the corrections system stems in part from the introduction of antipsychotic drugs in the 1960s. These medications helped treat the symptoms of mental illness and allowed many individuals suffering from mental illness to remain in the community. These medications were a great alternative for patients who would have otherwise been committed to mental institutions where they would not have been able to live normal, productive lives and would have received minimal treatment for their illnesses. Subsequent to this decrease of patients,
With prisons growing at the rate they are now, there must be more funding. 1 out of every 131 U.S citizens is incarcerated. The rest of the citizens have to pay for this person to have a place to sleep, eat, and exercise out of their taxes. These taxes can and should be used for more important issues. I...
According to Goomany & Dickinson (2015), there are many concerns that prison may not be an applicable setting for prisoners to be rehabilitated. Many prisoners have pre-existing mental health complications, and prison life can lead to deteriorating mental health issues, increased severity of the disease, and increased risk of prisoners harming themselves. In fact, mental health problems within the prison system are the leading cause of illness for prisoners. Scheyett, Parker, White, Davis, & Wohl (2010) states “A recent report by the United States Department of Health and Human Services indicates that an estimated fifty-six percent of state prison inmates had symptoms or recent history of a mental health problem; forty-seven percent of these reported three or more symptoms of major depression, compared with 7.9% of the general population of the United States” (p. 301). Research has shown that inmates that experience mental health issues are far higher than other prisoners in the general population to commit suicide during their first week of incarceration. Moschetti, Stadelmann, Wangmo, Holly, Bodenmann, Wasserfallen, & Gravier, (2015) comments that 35.1% of prisoners examined during a recent survey suffered from some form of mental disorder and among all inmates forty percent had at least one physical chronic health
... they are too jumbled to follow the many rules enforced by correctional facilities and, as a result, are more likely to be housed in solitary confinement: Numerous studies suggest further that “many offenders with serious mental illnesses cannot tolerate the severe conditions of solitary confinement and are particularly likely to experience mental and physical deterioration.“
In the United States 2,193,798 people are held in Federal prisons, local prisons and local/county jails. In local prisons 64.2 % of the inmates have a mental illness, 56.2 % in Federal prisons and 44.8 % in state prisons. Most of the inmates could have prevented their stay at the prisons if they were provided help for their illness, however they were not and they still have to serve their sentenced time. The inmates locked up are abused daily by other inmates or even the officers in charge. They cannot help they have illness and it is not fair that they have to suffer a punishment worse than they already have to. They are tormented and the abuse does not help their situation, the agitation can even make their condition worse, and the treatment for their illness is low quality if there is any at all. They are given harsh punishments or can even have their sentence made longer.