Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill

Category: Crime, Mental Disorder, Mental Health

Last Updated: 19 Apr 2023

Pages: 2 Views: 99

According to the article by Jim Mann, from the Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice, (2012) he states how the involvement in the criminal justice system with mentally ill offenders was profoundly affected by the decision which resulted in large numbers of mental hospital patients returning to the community during the mid-1970s. The article states that after an examination of the characteristics of mental health courts was conducted, the consensus results indicated that with the release of mental health patients into a community came the increase in crime rates. The article I researched was very brief, but lead me in the direction of crime levels within the community. Once individuals were released from the institutions, crime rates statistically increased, according to the data provided by the Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project stated that crime jumped greatly over a period of time.

People decided to try the event of deinstitutionalization in an attempt to save money for both the hospitals as well as individuals. They believed that a prescription drug was and would be cheaper than the cost of twenty-four hour care within an institution. About this time era is when the development of psychiatric drugs started coming into the picture. Unfortunately, according to these statistics, crime levels did increase since the start of institutionalization. My local community is fairly small, but for has a high crime rate for how small it is. We do have an institution here in town for the mentally ill, but the majority of the people that are here and have committed crimes and have done some serious issues due to being mentally ill, basically just get a slap on the hand. My community for the most part is great when it comes to helping people out with certain situations; however, our police department is horrible and lazy. THEY are the waste of money, not our institutions.

Anyways, within my community, we do have a homeless shelter, where housing is provided for families, and we also have assistance groups for victims of domestic violence. We also have a family planning clinic that runs solely on donations and provides birth control as well as condoms at no cost. We also have low income clinics that help people and provide health care, dental care, and mental health at charges all based on an individual’s family size and income. Basically, my local community is great for helping people, except for our police department.

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