I don't hear the birds. I don't breathe the crisp California air. Our country's jail and incarceration infrastructure is fundamentally inhumane and flawed. We all stand complicit in the cruel treatment of our fellow human beings, our correctional institutions a sad and ugly reflection of us. Although I don't necessarily accept the premise of incarceration, let's assume we have a societal necessity to remove certain people from our communities and jail them for crimes they've committed.
Why, then, do we have to deprive them of basic human dignities like privacy, personal space, clean clothes, sunshine, fresh air, edible food, books and family? Rather than build, fortify and rehabilitate our criminally convicted, our incarceration monster traumatizes, degrades and breaks our in-custodies, often leaving them unrecognizable and irreparably damaged. Every minute of confinement grinding their souls, squeezing away their humanity. Home Blog.
Reimagining Prison: The Community Reimagines. American Prisons Are Designed to Dehumanize. Reimagining Prison. How To Make An Impact. Have ideas? Find out how we are affecting change in our communities and how you can join one of our programs. Your impact checklist Here are a list of things you can do before and after the event to join the conversation. Data from reports conducted in in California, New York, and Oregon confirm improved mental health in forensic hospitals over untreated prisoners in jail.
In this study , forensic psychiatrist Victoria Harris found that those who received help in forensic hospitals reoffended at significantly lower rates than untreated offenders with mental illnesses. Forensic hospitals focus on a more rehabilitative approach; they treat offenders as patients who can and do recover and who can return to society as people who can be expected to be law-abiding citizens. In an evaluation of prisoners conducted using variables from the Theory of Planned Behavior TPB to conclude the amount of emotional distress inmates encounter and whether they have inclinations to seek help, the results showed high amounts of emotional distress and that a majority of the participants wanted help for suicidal and other personal issues.
Trauma and torture that occur in prisons could significantly affect these levels of emotional distress. Grayson L. Because of the overcrowding issue and the growing prison population over the past two decades, prisoners who need help for mental disorders cannot access treatment facilities due to the limited space and resources which cannot support the large number of prisoners. Because the prison system encourages overcrowding of prisons for monetary benefits, it ignores the effects the overcrowding has on the resources available for prisoners with severe mental illnesses.
In the BJS Survey on Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities , over half of inmates in California prisons claimed to have a diagnosed mental health issue and of this group of inmates, only half claimed to have received treatment for their mental health problem. These California prisons represent the results of most prisons across the United States where authorities continue to ignore prisoner mental disorders, and they show that mental health care may not be reaching all those in need.
Anthony Gay, a former prisoner put in solitary confinement, explains how the incarceration system worsened his mental health and failed to provide the proper treatment to help him recover and improve his behavior. Many United States prisons often fail to meet, or barely meet, acceptable standards for health care outlined and established by the World Health Organization in This lack of attention given towards mental health explains why mental illness rates in American prisons continue to increase.
Because many prisoners receive inadequate treatment for previous mental illnesses and because prison conditions worsen mental health issues, former prisoners frequently find themselves in need of care even after released. According to the National Institute of Health , over , offenders with mental illnesses return to society without any treatment for their illness.
This leads to difficulties in coping and recidivism among ex-offenders who find themselves on the same negative paths with worsening mental health issues. After many prisoners serve their time in prison, they often do not have the same opportunities as other citizens because the incarceration system takes away their rights and treats prisoners as inferior due to their criminal record, leaving them unable to live a fulfilled life. Having a criminal record in the United States automatically puts a person at a disadvantage in comparison to the rest of society.
Many former prisoners, especially those with felony charges, lose voting rights even after serving their sentence. As of , around 5. A majority of states in the United States take away the voting rights of convicted felons in some manner. For example, forty-eight states and Washington D. The restrictions on the right to vote prevent many convicted felons from fully becoming a regular citizen in society and put them at a permanent disadvantage since they will never have all the same democratic rights as others.
Even though states have their own processes of restoring voting rights to ex-offenders, the difficult and tedious process often prevents many ex-offenders from taking advantage of these opportunities. Daudi Justin wrote about his personal experience of how his criminal record affected his life after prison in a newspaper article from The Morningside Review.
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