Criminal Justice & Mental Illness

Mental Illness and Crime People with mental illness have been mishandled for many years and have been treated like lab rats. Prisons are overly crowded with mentally ill persons and they have now become a threat to society (Vogel, 2014). One’s Mental illness cannot determine whether someone will break the law, but it is one of many criminogenic, causing or likely to cause criminal behavior, risk factors that interact in complex ways influencing individual behavior (Vogel, 2014). This statement represents the stereotypical barriers that researchers have been fighting. In the public eye the mentally ill are often viewed as ,”Dangerous” and or “Incompetent” (Phelan, 2013). The problem is that people with mental illness are often labeled and associated with negative stigmas. These negative labels have become embedded in the community, causing numerouc misconceptions surrounding people with mental illness. Another prominent concern is that theyl are not receiving proper care while being incarcerated (Vogel, 2014). Inmates with mental illness are physically victimized 1.6 more times than inmates who do not suffer from mental illness. Their conditions are also likely to become worse depending on the correctional facility. To prevent this from happening researchers have been trying to collect a wider range of data in order to connect specific mental disorders to criminogenic behaviors. Researchers are also continue to search for intervention methods to decrease the incarceration rates of those with mental illness. People who experience mental illness are overrepresented in prisons and that is because they simply don’t belong there.