Introduction
The American society has effectively criminalized mental illnesses and imprisoned a lot of mentally ill citizens at the expense of public’s safety. However, I maintain that it is more important to decriminalize mental illnesses and promote the dignity of the mentally ill individuals. A lot of factors come to play when one seeks to support decriminalization of mental illnesses. For example, incarcerating mentally ill persons only increases recidivism and chances of their conditions getting worse. Therefore, the American government should decriminalize mental illnesses and focus resources on improving the quality and capacity of mental facilities to ensure that mentally ill individuals get access to sufficient care.
Ineffectiveness of Criminalization of Mental Illnesses
Some of the mentally ill individuals found guilty of crimes are attached to correctional facilities where they receive treatments and interventions appropriate to these conditions. Walker et al. (2016) observes that providing mental health treatments in incarceration centers is ineffective in many ways. To begin with, the state of incarcerating mentally ill patients imposes extra costs to the state as compared to other inmates. In Michigan, for example, the cost of maintaining mentally ill persons within correctional facilities costs $95,223 per inmate as compared to the $35,253 for other prisoners (Walker et al, 2016). In my view, incarcerating mentally ill individuals for the sake of improving public safety is wrong as it overburdens the state and results in extra expenses. The foregoing observation is notwithstanding the fact that a majority of the crimes committed by mentally ill individuals are petty and include trespassing, abuse of drugs, aggressive manhandling, and public urination.
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Focusing Resources
The goal of the incarceration system is to reform delinquents and preparing them to rejoin the society. However, it has been observed that prisoners with mental disorders remain locked up for a longer time as compared with the rest. Such a condition is caused by the fact that resources necessary for treating and responding to mental illnesses are not either unavailable or inadequate (Walker et al, 2016). To create a system that decriminalizes mental illnesses sufficiently, the government must focus on the creation of more treatment facilities and embark on separating criminals from the mentally ill individuals (Risdon et al, 2013). Owing to the inefficiency of correctional facilities in treating prisoners with mental illnesses, most of the released prisoners end up committing similar crimes and going back to jail. In my own view, this is wastage of public resources as the system fails in achieving its goals of reforming. Such a condition explains why I support decriminalization of mental illnesses and instead, promote the assertion that mentally ill delinquents should be treated separately.
Conclusion
Indeed, the elements of public safety and decriminalization of mental illnesses are mutually exclusive. The government can ensure public safety without incarcerating mentally ill individuals and putting them under the harsh jail living conditions. Instead, mentally ill patients should have their own specialized facilities where they receive appropriate care from qualified professionals. Failure to do this will result in futile efforts to reform mentally ill delinquents as some of them lack the basic skills of understanding correction. Indeed, such a condition explains why mentally ill individuals in the country have had high recidivism rates. To ensure that public resources are spent in a manner that reflects the needs of the society, the government should decriminalize mental illness and classify these individuals as under the special needs category. This will prompt authorities to dedicate enough resources to mental institutions to ensure that they are well equipped with resources, equipment, and qualified personnel.
References
Risdon N. Slate, Jacqueline K. Buffington-Vollum, W. Wesley Johnson. (2013). The Criminalization of Mental Illness (2nd ed.). Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press.
Walker, L. E., Pann, J. M., Shapiro, D. L., & B., V. H. (2016). Best Practices for the Mentally Ill in the Criminal Justice System . Cham: Springer International Publishing.
