Press Room
The Consensus Project is coordinated by:
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Overrepresentation of People with Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice
System
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Today, there are approximately 2 million people incarcerated in US prisons or
jails;
approximately 10 million people are booked into US jails over the course
of the year.
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Approximately
5 percent of the US population has a serious mental illness. The US Department of Justice reports,
however, that about 16 percent of the population in prison or jail has a
mental illness.
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A study conducted in New York State found that men involved in the public
mental health system over a five-year period were four times as likely to
be incarcerated as men in the general population; for women the ratio was
six to one.[5]
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The Los Angeles County Jail, the Cook County Jail (Chicago) and Riker's Island
(New York City) each hold more people with mental illness on any given day
than any hospital in the United States.[6]
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Nearly
three-quarters of inmates with mental illness have a co-occurring
substance abuse problem.[7]
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Inmates with mental illness in state prison were 2.5 times as likely to have been
homeless in the year preceding their arrest than inmates without a mental
illness.[8]
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Nearly half the inmates in prison with a mental illness were incarcerated for
committing a nonviolent crime.[9]
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Length of Stay Once Incarcerated
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On average, inmates with mental illness serve a longer portion of their sentence than inmates without mental illness.[10]
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On Riker's Island (New York City's largest jail), the average length of stay
for an inmate is 42 days; it is 215 days for an inmate with a serious
mental illness.[11]
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In 2000 in Pennsylvania, 16 percent of all releasees served their maximum
sentence. If an inmate had a mental illness, he/she was twice as likely to serve his/her maximum sentence than other inmates; having a serious mental illness meant the inmate was three times as likely to serve his/her maximum sentence.[12]
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Statewide Commissioners/Task Forces
Regarding Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System
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Within the last four years, almost half of the states have established special
commissions or task forces to look into some aspect of the mental health
system. Legislation calling for
the establishment of such bodies has been introduced in an additional 5
states.13
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Almost half of these commissions are explicitly charged with investigating the criminalization of mental illness.[14]
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Officials in King County, Washington, identified 20 people who had been repeatedly hospitalized, jailed or admitted to detoxification centers; in the course of one year, providing these emergency services to these 20 individuals cost the county at least $1.1 million.[15]
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Innovative Programs' Impact on Costs and Public Safety
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Staff from the Thresholds Jail Program, which provides case management for
people with mental illness released from jail in Cook County Illinois,
calculated the number of days that 30 people who had been through the
program were incarcerated and/or hospitalized in the year after their
participation in the program. In
total, the 30 individuals spent approximately 2,200 days less in jail (at
$70/day) than they had during the year preceding their participation in
Thresholds. These same 30 people
also spent about 2,100 fewer days (at $500/day) in hospitals.[16]
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Using Law Enforcement Resources More Efficiently
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In Memphis, Tennessee, before the implementation of their Crisis Intervention
Team (CIT) model, officers spent 4-6 hours at the medical center for
mental health admissions, which now average about 15 minutes. Shortly after the Memphis CIT was implemented, injuries suffered by individuals with mental illnesses caused by police decreased by nearly 40 percent.[17]
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In 1999, the Albuquerque Police Department, which also employs a CIT model,
reported that officers arrested, transported to jail, or otherwise took
into protective custody fewer than 10 percent of those people with mental
illnesses they contacted. Injuries were also reduced to just more than 1
percent of calls after their CIT model was implemented. The decrease in
use of SWAT was reported at 58 percent.[18]
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Violence, Mental Illness, and Victimization
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The results of several, large-scale research projects conclude that only a
weak statistical association between mental disorder and violence exists. Serious violence by people with major mental disorders appears concentrated in a small fraction of the total number, and especially among those who use alcohol and other drugs.[19]
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When a person with mental illness commits a violent crime, more than half the
time, the victim is a family member, a friend, or an acquaintance.[20]
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One study in North Carolina found that people with mental illness are almost
three times as likely to be victims of violent crime than people without
mental illness.[21]
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Not-Guilty-by-Reason -of-Insanity
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The public and the media often associate mental illness and the criminal
justice system with pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity (or under
new state laws, a conviction of guilty but insane). A small fraction of defendants with mental illness make such pleas. A 1996 study of the Baltimore Circuit Court estimated that of 60,342 indictments filed during one year, only 8 defendants (.013 percent) ultimately pleaded not criminally responsible. All 8 pleas were uncontested by the state.[22]
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