EDITORIAL
Are We Back at Bedlam? I N COLONIAL AMERI, CA it was common practice to grab lunatics off the streets and lock them in cells; here they were often stripped, tied down, and beaten into silence. Have things really improved today or are we back at Bedlam? A report recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice documents that as of midyear 1998, approximately 283,000 offenders with mental illnesses were incarcerated in the nation's jails and prisons. Comparatively, there were about 70,000 individuals in public psychiatric hospitals, 20,000 of whom were forensic patients. The report also showed that at year's end in 1998, an estimated 548,000 individuals with mental illnesses were on parole or probation.
This report corroborates an earlier report by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), which is called Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill: The Abuse of Jails as Mental Hospitals, (1992). According to this report, the 3,272 local jails in the United States are the nation's dumping grounds for the mentally ill. At the most conservative estimates, 180,000 individuals with schizophrenia or bipolar illnesses are incarcerated nationwide on any given day. Police admit to "mercy bookings" to protect people they see who are severely disoriented.
Jail is where someone should be if they have committed a significant criminal act. Very often, however, a person is arrested to get them off the street because they have committed an aberrant act. The street cops figure they know a place where the individual will at least get some help.