Fifth Of State Prison Inmates Mentally Ill

A legislative report shows more than 20 percent of Connecticut's approximately 19,000 prison inmates have moderate to severe mental illness.That fact is prompting some state lawmakers to point out an apparent shortage of trained psychiatric nurses and a need for more training for correction officers. Also, there's talk of creating a separate facility for inmates with mental illness to ease the space crunch" . . . . "If you want to free up prison beds [to keep violent offenders behind bars longer], then get these mentally ill people out of there," Lawlor said.

Confronting Confinement

On any given day, 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States, and over the course of a year, many millions spend time in prison or jail. 750,000 men and women work in correctional facilities. The annual cost: more than 60 billion dollars. Yet within three years, 67 percent of former prisoners will be rearrested and 52 percent will be re-incarcerated. At this moment, the effectiveness of America's approach to corrections has the attention of policy makers at all levels of government and in both political parties. The Commission and its report, Confronting Confinement, make a unique contribution to this timely national discussion by connecting the most serious problems and abuses inside jails and prisons with the health and safety of our communities.

Does Treatment Work for Sex Offenders?

Similar to aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous, relapse prevention has sex offenders own up to wrongdoing and resign themselves to a lifelong day-to-day struggle with temptation. But one of the few authoritative studies of the method, conducted in California from 1985 to 2001, found that those who entered relapse prevention treatment were slightly more likely to offend again than those who got no therapy at all.
Clinicians who work with sex offenders cling to relapse prevention nonetheless, and its durability speaks volumes about the troubled, politically fraught science of treating sex offenders. Not only is relapse prevention of questionable value, but so are the tests to gauge whether sex offenders in treatment still get inappropriately aroused, the drugs used for so-called chemical castration and the methods of predicting risk of reoffending.
Treatment methods have become particularly topical as thousands of sex offenders are confined or restricted beyond their prison terms under civil commitment laws on the books in 19 states.

Should sex offenders be released after they have finished their prison terms?

The decision by New York to confine sex offenders beyond their prison terms places the state at the forefront of a growing national movement that is popular with politicians and voters. But such programs have almost never met a stated purpose of treating the worst criminals until they no longer pose a threat.
About 2,700 pedophiles, rapists and other sexual offenders are already being held indefinitely, mostly in special treatment centers, under so-called civil commitment programs in 19 states, which on average cost taxpayers four times more than keeping the offenders in prison.

Can People with Mental Illness Receive Adequate Treatment in Prisons?

Mentally Ill Inmate Dies Alone (60 Minutes Episode). Scott Pelley looks at the case of Timothy Souders. The inmate's death was recorded on camera while he was in solitary confinement and has instigated a look at the prison's mental health care.