Crazy? Jail’s the place for you
This post has been a long time in the making. Over the past few months, I’ve had to deal with clients – and have observed other lawyers dealing with their clients – who have severe mental health problems. And each one of us can tell you that there’s nothing more difficult – or more heartwrenching – than coming to an appropriate resolution of a criminal case involving a defendant with mental health problems.
Not only does one have the normal problems of communicating with a person who may be hearing voices, or who may believe that he is an FBI recruit who has to save the world while the Russians are tracking him with embedded micro-chips, but one also struggles with the failings of a system that has no room for clients like that.
While I usually decry the heartlessness of prosecutors and judges on this blog, I have to say my experiences in this area have been to the contrary. While they don’t get in the way, they do join the defeaning chorus that reminds us of the futility of our efforts.
There’s just nowhere to put clients with mental health problems. And I’m not talking about short-term facilities for 30 or 90 days or the mental hospital, but a true long-term residential program where patients are treated for their mental health problems. Could I get a client into a 90 day program? Sure, but that doesn’t address anything. 90 days is too short. The clients are given some meds; the voices stop and they’re sent on their way. You and I both know that isn’t going to solve or address the underlying problem and as soon as the medications stop working the voices will return.
So without a place that can house such a client for a year or two or three, there’s only one alternative: prison. The worst alternative of them all may be the only one. Prisons may be the only place capable of housing these patients with supervision for an extended period of time. Like there aren’t enough people to fill our prisons already.
And what happens when someone with severe mental health issues goes to prison? Nothing productive. They’re given some meds, kept barely sane and then released when their term is up. There are no plans in place, no treatment, no structure and no support. Released into the wild – like all other prisoners, I must add – but with an added disadvantage.
The State of CT has some mental health facilities, but none really equipped to house patients long-term and give them psychiatric care. And the Governor talked recently about closing one of those facilities and removing its 150 or so beds.
So when a judge agrees with you that your client shouldn’t be in jail, but then follows up with: “what’s the solution?” and you have none, it is a frustrating feeling of failure.
There is no solution, currently, and there doesn’t seem to be one on the books in the near future. And so our prisons will continue to be populated by people who have no business being there and who will continue to get ignored. Who wins in this scenario, really?
| Print article | This entry was posted by Gideon on August 23, 2009 at 4:14 pm, and is filed under clients, inmate issues, mental health. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 11 months ago
http://sexoffenderisues.blogspot.com
See this article as well, which is related.
http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/2008/05/courts_prisons_fail_in_treamen.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/released/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525751,00.html
about 11 months ago
One set of folks will say that the underlying problem is that we decided some years ago that you can’t just involuntarily commit people just because they’re mentally ill.
Of course, that’s not the problem. That’s good sense. The problem is that nobody was willing to establish (or fund) decent alternatives. Prison isn’t the best worst solution. It’s not a solution at all. It’s an additional part of the problem. (Maybe in Connecticut mentlly ill prisoners are given meds. Not everywhere. Even that minimal treatment of symptoms puts Connecticut at the forefront of treating mentally ill prisoners.)
Prison is the pure consequence of abject failure. But it’s not primarily a failure of ideas or funding (though there’s that). Really it’s a failure of caring. We don’t want to see the mentally ill. We don’t want to deal with them. We don’t want to acknowledge them. We don’t want to warehouse them (or god forbid treat them) because that would involve admitting they’re out there. So we criminalize them and lock them up not in involuntary commitment for marginally effective treatment but in prison, where we can pretend they’re evil rather than ill.
And where we can be reasonably sure they’ll get worse.
about 11 months ago
Interesting article. What might be going on with the rather lucid mentally ill, is they go online under social media and become involved with various communities: some dangerous, and down right ugly. There is a stigma of mental illness by numerous groups, especially in urban communities. So, someone in this community probably has not gotten adequate care. And these illnesses are degenerative if left untreated. Throwing medications at the problem without therapy, does not assist with the environmental impacts or if there are inconsistencies in the mechanisms of treatment.