(June 11, 2015) “The absence of treatment in the community puts the court at the place of do nothing, because there are very little treatment options,” said John Larivee president of the Boston-based research and advocacy group Community Resources for Justice (“Matters of the mind: Mental health and crime,” CBS Boston, Jun. 10).
“But in terms of ending that behavior or treating that behavior, it just continues in prison or jail,” Larivee said.
A lack of mental health treatment options is a major contributing factor in the mass incarceration of people with mental illness in Massachusetts and across the country. The Treatment Advocacy Center in 2014 found data that “there are now 10 times more individuals with serious mental illness in prisons and jails than there are in state mental hospitals.”
Massachusetts is among the states that make the least effort to divert mentally ill individuals away from the corrections system and into treatment. It also is one of only five states without an assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) program, which would provide treatment for people before they encounter the criminal justice system.
Without mandatory community treatment options, people with severe mental illness are being set up for failure.
But the real failure is the country’s inability to provide treatment for the most severely ill. Making matters worse, Massachusetts is continuing to eliminate public psychiatric hospital beds when there are already far too few.
Read the Treatment Advocacy Center report “The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails” to learn more.
(Photo: [AndreasS]/Flickr)
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