Trapped by Rules, The Mentally Ill Languish in Prison / For Such Felons, Parole Is Rare, Recidivism Is Probable; Lack of State Hospitals
Source: By GARY FIELDS, Wall Street Journal (subscription required), May 3, 2006
........ In recent years, Oklahoma has had a dramatic increase in mentally ill prisoners, in part because it only recently shuttered state-run, mental-health facilities. According to the state, the number of inmates on psychiatric medications more than tripled between 1998 and 2005 to 4,017. The system's budget for such medication climbed even faster, growing from $154,000 a year to more than $2 million, in part because of the growing number of medications available. By comparison, the overall prison population rose 14% to 23,205.
....... Many states, responding to budget pressures and changing ideas about how to treat mental disorders, closed their residential mental institutions. ........ The idea was that community agencies would take over treating and monitoring these patients but in almost all cases they haven't picked up the slack. The number of long-term, non-criminal psychiatric patients housed in Oklahoma's state facilities is about 200, a fraction of the 1,300 they held in the 1980s, according to the state's department of mental health. Griffin Memorial, the remaining state hospital, houses about 162 of those but generally only for two weeks at a time until patients are judged stable enough to be released into the community.
There are private and community facilities where families can pay to have a patient placed, but most are not for the indigent. These organizations are also reluctant to take in people released from prison with mental problems, Dr. Keithley said.