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The Prison System and The Mentally Ill

     I will tell the stories of two people who are mentally ill and in prison. Adam Hall grew up in a town in upstate New York called Utica. At the age of five he tried to burn down his family home in an effort to kill himself and his family. That was the first sign of mental illness in his life. He drew a picture of his family having a happy reunion in heaven. His mother Carol Hall realized at that point in his life that he needed help from a mental health professional but she could not afford to pay for one, as a result, Adam spent many years of his life in and out of psychiatric institutions and group homes. Adam was molested in twice as a young man. He developed a panoply of mental illness among which was Bipolar Disorder.

     When he was a teenager, he got in trouble with the law many times. At the age of 22 he was convicted of assault after stealing a car and resisting arrest. He was convicted of a minor felony and sentenced to three years in jail. He frequently broke prison rules and was placed in solitary confinement.

     In 2003 New York Correctional Association found out that inmates diagnosed with mental illness made up 11% of the State’s inmate population they constituted a quarter of the inmates in isolated confinement in the State’s Special Housing Unit (SHU). In 2008 the SHU Exclusion Law reduced the number of mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement by increasing the number of Residential Mental Health Unit (RMHU) beds. Hall was given one of those beds.

     Hall remained unstable and suicidal. In 2011 he attempted to kill himself by setting fire to his cell. The prison judicial system had the option to treat the behavior as a manifestation of his mental illness and not as a criminal act. This could have been done through internal disciplinary and classification process. The system decided to send the case to the local District Attorney who tried him as a criminal. Hall received a verdict of guilty of arson, which carried a possible 25 year prison sentence. Hall had a public defender who instructed Him to plead guilty to third degree arson. As a result, he was given a sentence of six years. Based on the fact that Hall had verifiable mental illness, he should not have had his case taken to the local District Attorney.

         Adam Hall was shipped to another RMHU located in Attica, New York, where he is today. He was fined $4,000, which he cannot afford to pay, for burning down his jail cell.

A veteran former New York State corrections officer, said that people like Hall were doomed from the moment they arrived in prison, if not, before. They tended to rack up small felony charges, one after another, so that they effectively served a life sentence, shut away out of sight in some form of solitary confinement.

     The second case is about a lady named Elle who is 34 and has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She lived in New York City and had a steady job in a law office. Elle was studying for the Law School Admission Test. She seemed stable-so stable that to clear her mind for the test, she stopped taking her medication.

     It wasn’t long before she had a mental breakdown and ran away. She ended up in Georgia, in homeless shelters and a county jail. She stopped taking her medication once again and she ended up in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, nearly 100 miles from home. Elle was arrested while walking down the street, suspected of stealing cash from the cash register of a gas station.

     That was nearly two years ago. She has been trapped in Pennsylvania justice system ever since.  A judge deemed Elle incompetent to stand trial because of her mental illness. She is on a waiting list to be admitted into a psychiatric hospital for treatment. However, there are not enough beds in the hospitals. Pennsylvania is one of the worst states when it comes to these wait times.

     In Pennsylvania, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the state Department of Human Services in 2015 over these delays, settled twice and has since filed another motion asking the court to intervene.

     As of April 2019, defendants are finally getting into hospital beds more quickly. The average wait time is 24 days to be admitted for “competency restoration”-the legal term for providing basic mental health care so someone is coherent enough to understand the charges against them and assist in their defense. Elle was admitted into Norristown State Hospital.           

      The most common mental illnesses that prisoners have are listed in order from the most to the least occurring: (1) depression, (2) mania, (3) anxiety, (4) PTSD.

California is the only state in the United States has a law that criminal charges can be dismissed if a person is found to have a mental illness and If the defendant successfully completes treatment.

Here are some State funded in Prison Rehabilitation Programs

• Academic Education
• Career Technical Education (CTE)
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)-is a psycho-social intervention that aims to improve mental health. CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. (Wikipedia)
• Employment Preparation
• Substance Use Disorder Treatment (SUDT)
• Arts-in-Corrections
• Innovative Programming Grants

The following are recommendations for improving treatment for mentally ill inmates:

• Provide appropriate treatment for prison and jail inmates with serious mental illness
• Implement and provide jail diversion programs
• Promote the use of assisted outpatient treatment
• Encourage cost studies
• Establish careful intake screening
• Mandate release planning

Signed Renee D. Warring of Uniquely And Wonderfully Made Ministries

RESOURCES:

https://solitarywatch.org/2012/05/14/criminalizing-mental-illness-the-story-of-adam-hall/

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/06/06/mentally-ill-and-languishing-in-jail

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/mental-health-inmates