The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas Essay

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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a short story by Ursula Le Guin, features a utopian society that can have a perfect existence as long as they allow one child to suffer. This metaphor by Guin can be used to explain what is currently happening in Alabama’s prison system. Rather than coming up with a meaningful solution to mental illness, the state of Alabama instead decides to incarcerate their citizens suffering from mental illnesses. Alabama government officials can no longer afford to continue its path of incarcerating its mental population for the sake of the public because of the costs and moral injustice, and instead Alabama’s citizens need to vote in lawmakers who can implement new laws and solutions that are more humane and constitutional. Alabama’s state government is currently ineffective in regards …show more content…

On the issue of providing care to mentally ill patients in prisons, the sheriff’s department was involved in a survey where, “55 percent said they were not equipped, 32.5 percent were prepared and 12.5 percent said it was a mix, meaning they could handle some situations and not others” (As Alabama Cuts). So not only are the prisons unable to provide proper care in most cases, incarcerating the mentally ill does not actually help the budget because it costs more to house them in prison. Psychiatric medicine cause these patients to be a heavier burden on the taxpayer where one study found, “prisoners with mental illness range from $30,000 to $50,000 a year” (Enslinger 10). Alabama allows prisons to petition the state government to move mentally ill patients out, but because of the lack of beds in mental hospitals they cannot accomplish this task. As Dr. Fuller Torrey, Mary Zdanowicz Esq., Sherriff Aaron Kennard, Dr. Richard Lamb, Donald Enslinger, Michael Biasotti, and Doris Fuller write in “The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails: A State Survey”, “The

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