Mary Beth Pfeiffer's Crazy In America

901 Words2 Pages

In the book Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of our Criminalized Mentally Ill, Mary Beth Pfeiffer argues that the government has failed America's mentally ill population. She shows how, after the closing and downsizing of many mental hospitals, there have not been sufficient programs to take care of the mentally ill and help them live normal lives. Instead, these people often relapse and end up in jail, where their psychotic outbursts are punished harshly, exacerbating their illnesses. The author presents six anecdotes of mentally ill people suffering due to stays in prison or encounters with the police. In each case, she first gives a background on the person's life, then tells the story of how he or she first began getting into legal trouble, and then describes the events leading up to the incident and the incident itself. Finally, she …show more content…

The author uses logos by outlining step-by-step how the police or the correctional officers treated the inmate. She points out all of the times when something went wrong and explains why this had a negative effect and how it could have been avoided. Using this strategy, she proves that the police or correctional officers, the authorities, and the system failed to rehabilitate the inmate, and instead caused him or her damage. Pfeiffer also employs a great deal of pathos in this section, using charged words and phrases such as “tension,” “conflict,” “coerced,” and “deprivation” to describe what the inmates had to suffer. She also uses phrases with great emotional charge; for example, jail staff saw the inmates as “less than human.” She combines the perspectives of the people, their fellow inmates, and their family members to depict the conditions that they had to suffer and the fear and despair that they felt. The climax of this section occurs when the inmate either dies or suffers a horrible

Open Document