In the United States, there has been a steady escalation in the number of incarcerated people suffering various psychiatric or psychological disorders. U.S Department of justice statistics reveal incidents of recent histories of mental illnesses and disorders among 20 percent of state prisoners and 1 percent higher among prisoners in local jails. According to these statistics, U.S jails are the recipients of above 2 million prisoners suffering serious mental illnesses and an array of addictive disorders (Gonzalez & Connell, 2014) .
The underlying fact from these statistics is that currently in the United States, the prison system houses more mentally ill individuals than those undergoing treatment for mental illnesses in the United States. A stark comparison indicated the presence of 356,000 mentally ill people in U.S Prisons against 35,000 in states hospital for mental health related issues (Gonzalez & Connell, 2014) . This incarceration of people with mental illnesses is associated with various problems for the prisoner, the corrections system, the American society and the justice system at large in addition to evoking moral dilemmas and cost implications.
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The current trend of routine confinement of mentally ill people in prisons rather than hospitals specialized in addressing mental health is rooted in America’s history. This practice is traceable to the 18 th and 19 th centuries in the years between 1770 and 1820 (Pittaro, 2015) . With the prisons preference for dealing with people with mental illness, however, there emerged a moral dilemma in which the appropriateness of this practice came under heavy scrutiny, and eventually faced widespread criticism. Opponents of the incarceration of mentally ill people as a way of dealing with their mental illness posited that this practice was inhumane and problematic, and was in fact counter-productive vis-a-vis its intended purposes (Wolff, 2005) .
Consequently, in the years following 1820 up until 1970, there was a prevalence of confinement of mentally ill people in psychiatric institutions. The United States has, however, since the 1970s, reverted to the practice of confining people with mental illnesses to jails and prisons as opposed to psychiatric hospitals as evidenced by the higher number of mentally ill individuals in the corrections system than in mental health hospitals (Pittaro, 2015) . This situation was further exacerbated by the deinstitutionalization of the state mental health system, which led to the release of mentally ill people from long-term mental treatment institutions into the community plagued by a lack of adequate support. Consequently, these individuals get caught in the vicious web of the criminal justice system resulting in the escalation of social problems marring the United States corrections system of prisons and jails (Gonzalez & Connell, 2014) .
Initially, deviant behavior was adequately defined and managed within the confines of a psychiatric framework. In contrast, however, deviant behavior has been redefined and its management had been channeled away from the psychiatric framework into the criminal framework. According to statistics, an enormous number of mentally ill individuals go into the criminal justice system annually (Skeem, Manchak, & Peterson, 2010) . Some of these individuals may penetrate the justice system deeper with repeat arrests and prosecutions, and may ultimately find themselves in the corrections system over time. In the United States corrections system then, there is an overrepresentation of people with serious mental illnesses which can be disabling as well, such as major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and psychopathy. A common observation among this population is that out of every four prisoners with serious mental illness, three have, in addition to the mental illness, a substance abuse disorder (Gonzalez & Connell, 2014) .
The United States’ jails and prisons are perceived to have become the nation’s largest psychiatric hospital. This is due to various factors besides the deinstitutionalization of state mental health facilities. Also contributing to this situation is an increase in laws that are restrictive against the involuntary hospitalization and confinement to psychiatric institutions, and the prevalent insufficiency of community based psychiatric based services which became favored in place of long-term mental illness treatment facilities as elicited by the deinstitutionalization movement (Pittaro, 2015) . Deviant behavior has been redefined in present day criminal terminology by various representatives of social control such as the law enforcement and the judiciary. Consequently, in instances where deviant behavior is engaged in by people with mental illnesses, such behavior is treated as criminal behavior whereas such deviant behavior could have appropriately been prevented or managed through psychiatric treatment. A clear expression of this paradox is the arrest, conviction and incarceration of an individual for violence which is in fact, the direct product of their untreated mental illness (Gonzalez & Connell, 2014) . This situation negatively affects the lives of mentally ill inmates who are confined to the corrections system, the community in general and also overwhelms the criminal justice system.
The overrepresentation of mentally ill individuals in the United States corrections system also attracts the problematic issue of high rates of recidivism. Court orders are issued for the provision of adequate health care in prisons, albeit limited to the treatment of “severe” and “serious” mental illnesses. As a result, the access of inmates to mental healthcare in U.S prisons is sporadic. With the inadequate or non-existent treatment for mental illnesses among prisoners with mental illnesses in the United States corrections system, these prisoners are likely to fail under correctional supervision (Gonzalez & Connell, 2014) . In instances of parole for such inmates, parolees with mental illness in contrast to parolees devoid of mental illness have a higher affinity of having a revocation of their paroles as they engage in deviant behavior that is directly linked to their untreated mental illnesses while they were still inmates more than it is linked to criminal tendencies. Up to 62 percent of parolees with mental illness were twice more likely to be incarcerated again within one year of release compared to parolees without mental illness (Skeem, Manchak, & Peterson, 2010) .
The assumption of the role of mental health treatment institutions by U.S prisons is accompanied by various cost implications on various levels. The cost associated with the incarceration of mentally ill individuals include the general operational costs of the prisons and jails these people are incarcerated in. They include special staffing, legal expenses, food costs, and mental and general healthcare expenses (Wolff, 2005) . There are also indications that the recidivism costs associated with mentally ill individuals are thrice higher than those of reintegrating former inmates without mental illnesses. A large amount of state and federal resources are also spent in correctional facilities to cater for the special needs and situations that are occasioned by mentally ill inmates upon the premise that a majority of mentally ill inmates require mental health related interventions. According to The Department of Justice estimates, American taxpayers spend about $15 million to cater for people with mental illnesses in the U.S corrections system (Pittaro, 2015) .
In the face of the problem of mental illness for the U.S corrections system, there has been the attraction of attention emanating from offenders with mental illness owing to their burgeoning numbers and the poor outcomes associated with their incarceration. Therefore, there has been the development of an array of interventions targeting the mentally ill inmates. Such interventions have been involving practitioners and policy makers in the justice system such as the National Institute of Corrections, the American Probation and Parole Association and the CSG Justice Center. The CSG Justice Center has been involved in efforts to assist federal, state and local policymakers as well as professionals in criminal justice and mental health to advance their responses to individuals who enter with the justice system and have mental illness (Gonzalez & Connell, 2014) . Through this initiative, there has been a conglomeration of justice system professionals to promote adequate treatment of mental illness for inmates through various means such as pharmacotherapy, and also significantly reduce the recidivism rates associated with mentally ill people in the U.S correctional system. Various other initiatives such as the Stepping Up Initiative which aims to de-escalate the statistics involving individual suffering mental illness in county correctional facilities across the United States have also been developed and implemented (Pittaro, 2015) .
It is evident that mental health poses problems in the U.S correctional system. Aggravating these problems is the inadequate treatment of inmates with mental illnesses for mental conditions, therefore, placing such people at greater risks of correctional rehabilitation treatment failure. This also adversely affects the healthcare costs upon release from prisons for the affected individuals and their appropriate reintegration in society resulting in recidivism which farther escalates costs of handling such inmates. There is need, therefore, for increased effective interventions from all parties involved right from the federal government, the local authorities and the community in general to effectively reduce the number of individuals with mental illness in correctional facilities throughout the United States.
References
Gonzalez, J. M., & Connell, N. M. (2014). Mental Health of Prisoners: Identifying Barriers to Mental Health Treatment and Medication Continuity. American Journal of Public Health, 104 (12), 2328–2333. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302043
Pittaro, M. (2015, December 7). The Challenges of Incarcerating Mentally ill Inmates . Retrieved from In Public Safety: https://inpublicsafety.com
Skeem, J. L., Manchak, S., & Peterson, J. K. (2010). Correctional Policy for Offenders with Mental Illness: Creating a New Paradigm for Recidivism Reduction. American Psychology-Law Society Journal, 35 , 110-122. doi:10.1007/s10979-010-9223-7
Wolff, N. (2005). Community reintegration of prisoners with mental illness: A social investment perspective. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 28 (1), 43-58. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2004.12.003
