People With Serious Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System free essay sample

People with serious mental illness problems are being processed through the criminal justice system rather than the mental health system. The excessive representation of PSMI in the criminal justice system is boldly the result of correctional crime control policies and the war on drugs. There are programs that have been put in in place to be assistance to the mentally ill under the authority of law enforcement, courts, and corrections. The criminal justice system has made serious attempts to care for these people. Mental illness is only one of many problems that torment criminal involved mental ill persons. About 4 decades ago researchers first noticed that the mental ill were becoming criminalized. Criminalization comes into motion when people with no criminal intent are arrested and institutionalized for minor crimes. This conduct can discourage, threaten or even scare the people aroundIn the 1980s several studies found that people with serious mental illness were being arrested when a mental health evaluation should have been chosen. We will write a custom essay sample on People With Serious Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Most of the mentally ill that were arrested charged and convicted of felonies are handled through the criminal justice system because they behaved criminally. One study observed that PSMI could be grouped in three different groups. The first group was arrested largely for public order violations and fit the characterization of the criminalized mentally ill. The second group was arrested for committing petty or survival crimes like prostitution or shoplifting, crimes that will supplement a small income. The third group was indistinguishable from offenders with no mental illness. Their criminal backgrounds consisted of a combination of street crimes. A study says that most of the mentally ill criminals commited crimes because of problems with anger and impulsiveness. The rise of mentally ill persons in jails and prisons happened mostly because there was a decrease in availability in mental institutions. The hydraulic hypothesis was the theory that when the population of one institution goes down the population of the other institution goes up. Which was in reference to the mental hospital and prisons.