Criminalization of Mental Illness

Fifty years of failed mental health policy have placed law enforcement on the front lines of mental illness crisis response and turned jails and prisons into the new asylums.

Deinstitutionalization, outdated treatment laws demanding a person become violent before intervention, discriminatory federal Medicaid funding practices and the prolonged failure by states to fund their mental health systems drive those in need of care into the criminal justice and corrections systems, rather than into the public health system where they belong.

This “criminalization” of mental illness has wide ranging and devastating consequences.

Today:

• In 44 states, a jail or prison holds more mentally ill individuals than the largest remaining state psychiatric hospital.
• Individuals with psychiatric diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are 10 times more likely to be in a jail or prison than a hospital bed.

While many states attempt to divert people from jail if their crimes are the product of illness, diversion alone cannot address policies making the care of those with mental illness a law enforcement matter rather than a medical one.

Criminalizing mental illness worsens the health of hundreds of thousands of people and complicates their recovery by creating additional barriers to housing and employment. It burdens law enforcement and correctional systems. In the process, it costs taxpayers countless dollars. Nobody benefits, everybody pays.

Help the Treatment Advocacy Center stop the criminalization of serious mental illness. Learn how to be an advocate now.