By Dahlia Lithwick
Slate
WASHINGTON — America’s prisons have become warehouses for the severely mentally ill.
A 2014 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center notes bluntly that “prisons and jails have become America’s ‘new asylums.’ ” Ten times more mentally ill people are now in jails and prisons than in state psychiatric hospitals: In 2012, approximately 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness were in prisons and jails, while about 35,000 severely ill patients were in state psychiatric hospitals.
Many of these inmates would have been in hospitals prior to the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s, but now there are not enough beds, and many mental health hospitals have been closed down. According to one report, the number of state psychiatric beds in the nation declined from a high of approximately 550,000 in 1960 to 40,000 today. So extremely sick people are locked up, often for trivial offenses, frequently without treatment, as their illnesses worsen. Upon release, they are more likely than other prisoners to recidivate and be incarcerated again.
Full Sory: Prisons Have Become America’s New Asylums