Please watch the following video: Why Are We Using Prisons to Treat Mental Illness? • OverCriminalized • BRAVE NEW FILMS (BNF)
Also, please read the article about the stabbing spree on the subway in February: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/nyregion/rigoberto-lopez-nyc-subway-stabbings.html?smid=url-share
How can we overcome the current practice and the long-standing legacy of overcriminalization of mental illness?
Please leave at least three comments. One is your original contribution. And two comments are you replies to your classmates. Deadline: 10/17/21, 11:59 pm.
30 thoughts on “Discussion Forum 7: Mental Health and Jails/Prisons”
I think that we can overcome the current practice and the long-standing legacy of overcriminalization of mental illness by continuing to train law enforcement officers with CIT (Crisis Intervention Training). New officers are recruited everyday and part of their training should be CIT. Mental health illness is very important and people who have it should be handled differently from normal people. They should be handled gently and with care, not with force or weapons. CIT is the perfect solution to overcome the interactions between law enforcement officers and mentally ill patients. Taking them to the right facility like a restoration center instead of emergency rooms or jail cell is a great idea. This will actually give them the help they need. Officers who do not follow CIT and harm or kill mentally ill people should be punished, they should not get away with doing such to a person who has no control over their body or actions sometimes. There is a chance that law enforcement officers will come across a mentally ill person, so having CIT is very crucial in overcoming the long-standing legacy of overcriminalization of mental illness.
Hi Amy, I agree with you 100% people with mental health problems should not be treated as criminals, also they should be handled differently as you mentioned before with care and gently not weapons and force. Also, police officers should be all required to be CIT trained, this would avoid so many unnecessary tragedies.
Hello Amy, I agree that new officers should have done CIT training from the academy. Also, that people with mental illness should be handled differently from regular criminals.
Hello Amy,
I agree that the officers and people who are called into help should be trained to not rely on their weapons and have the ability to use other means to calm the situation. I also agree that taking them to the correct facility is an important piece in reducing unnecessary incarcerations as well as treating people in a humane way. I agree that officers who kill unarmed people should be punished and we can start that by ending qualified immunity.
–Cuffia
Hi Amy I agree with you if all officers were properly trained to deal with situations like these, there would not be so many cases where mentally ill people end up or imprisoned or dead.
In order to overcome this problem we need to change the way we deal with these situations. Police officers should all be required to received CIT (Crisis Intervention Training) before they can be put out on the streets. On the other hand, Police officers should not be only answer when it comes to someone calling 911 asking for help for a mental health crisis, the same way we have fire fighters to respond to fires, we should have certified professionals to be deployed when someone calls for help in those cases, phone calls should be filtered and send to the appropriate department, sending someone with a gun without any CIT training to deal with a mental health crisis can only result in sending people to jail and sadly many times in deadly shootings. The government has to start giving more founding to mental health clinics and stop criminalizing mental illness, and start hiring more professionals since it seems like mental health problems is something that keeps increasing specially after the pandemic. Sending someone to jail does not solve anything, it makes it worse, instead, people with mental health problems should be send to clinics where they can actually be treated and not punished.
Hi Julio. Expanding on your idea, I think that there should be another number other than “911,” to contact the CIT officers. The phone numbers between officers ready to fight crime and CIT officers ready to help a mentally ill person should differ. It would be more efficient and faster for everyone, the person making the call and the person answering it.
Hi Amy, that would be a great idea to have a different number to dial, now if you dial 311 they direct you to mental health services but I don’t think it works as efficient as I would like, it takes was too long to get connected with someone and not many people really relay on that number, but it would be great to fix that
I agree with you Julio , i definitely believe there should be another way to get help fr someone suffering a mental health problem instead of calling 911 and dispatching officers that are not trained to deal with mental health . A licensed psychologist and/ or psychiatrist on a tam with officers trained to physically apprehend them just incase things escalate due to that person’s mental state.
I agree CIT is an important resource for officers to attend because not all are aware on how to act when coming in contact with a person with mental illnesses. Its also true on how you brought the point of 911 being the only number or resource that people can call for any crisis we do need a better system with more programs not just for law enforcement but individuals to gain acknowledgment on what we can do as people to better a system of more awareness of mental illnesses.
To end the fight against individuals with mental illnesses being treated as though their illness doesn’t exist ,i believe most public servants should be trained on the dos and don’ts. Being trained how to properly identify and interact with someone experiencing mental illness or an episode with CIT (Crisis Intervention Training) can not only help but strengthen the way the community interacts with law enforcement/ public servants .Yes in no way am i saying an individual committing a crime should get off scotch free but if that individual does not have a stable mental foundation then i believe everyone has the right to proper rehabilitation/ medical services to be well . How can anyone sane and having authority continously put individuals with mental illness at risk when they are presented with all the factors of their condition or even having the tools to assist correctly choose to send them to jail or prison . Some situations are judged within seconds and i feel as though if everyone understood how they can play a part in safely helping then we can overcome this crisis.
Hi Mika, I agree with you, police officers are not properly trained to deal with those type of situations, and as you mentioned some situations get judged within seconds ending many times in tragedies.
Hi Mika. I agree that CIT can do more than help by strengthening their relationship with their community. It really makes the community feel safer and like they could rely on CIT to tend to their needs and actually be helpful without use of force or commands.
Hello Mika, I agree that people with mental illnesses shouldn’t be put into jails and that they should get the help that they need.
Hi Mika, yes I agree with you that officials who has CIT can improve the community and actually help the mentally ill and get them the help that they need instead of arresting them.
I saw in the video that most police officers aren’t trained to handle people with mental illness and that caused many deads. Also, because the officers don’t know how to deal with people with mental illness they treat them like any other criminal and put them into jails. At the end of the video, the majority of the police officers of San Francisco were trained to deal with people that have mental illnesses. The training is called CIT (Crisis Intervention Training) and I personally think that every police officer should take it as a requirement in the police academy. People with mental illnesses don’t know what they are doing so, they deserve to be treated differently.
Hi Francisco, I also agree that every officer should take the CIT as that can prepare them with mentally ill people.
hi Francisco , i wish this was implemented everywhere . I dislike that public servants aren’t trained consistently through out the country . Other countries have shown they have some what of a way to deal with responding to certain calls without violence and they have lower percentages according to the statistics of mental health problems as well.
They should get treated differently because they don’t know what did they, if it was good or bad. Some criminals know what they are doing and they choose to have that lifestyle.
We can overcome the current practice and long-standing legacy of overcriminalization of mental illness by preparing the cops on how to deal with people who suffer from mental illness. Mental illness is a serious illness that many people suffer from today and it should be looked as important. I think the CIT (Crisis Intervention Training) should be taken by every police officer and should be mandatory as that can help them identify individuals who suffer from mental illness. Police officers should take their time while responding to a person with mental illness, and not be rough with them. It’s sad that a lot of people suffer from mental illness and have to get arrested and thrown in jail when they cannot control their behaviors.
Hello,
We can change how we do policing. CIT and programs like it in Salt Lake City, Seattle, and San Antonio. Giving police the tools and skills to talk to mentally ill people in crisis, leads to less deaths at the hands of police when they are called for these issues. Teaching de-escalation and ways to maintain control over the situation without a weapon go far in making progress and less death. These types of programs also reduce repeat callers that take up police officers time and resources. And there are units that have not used force even once, that shows that it’s possible to do community policing.
Sincerely,
Cuffia
I agree we do need a system that will set standers in helping those with mental illnesses and with the appropriate resources it can be the first steps because it will create a system to better the criminal justice system it will even give those in authority to better themselves and learn.
Over-criminalization is such a disturbing problem of our system. For as long as I can remember jail is where the mentally ill went. The same people I used to see on the street begging for money and for advocacy and sleeping on the train managed to find themselves incarcerated. Why is this? The problem is systemic racism and a complete disregard for the mental stability of people of color. This is not a vague issue and it is not a grey area, this is black and white, it is a reflection of our colonizers. The majority of people incarcerated are not only people of color but poor people, drug crimes. Mental illness has been weaponized against black and brown people but the rich and white have profited off of tv shows encouraging other white people to utilize mental health services. How can we overcome this? To be honest I’m not completely sure. How do we overcome years and years of systemic racism and change the minds of the 1%? What I do know is that we need more fierce advocates and emphatic person centered social workers. We try to help in little ways and we do our part in bringing this issue to light.
Jai,
I agree that it can be overwhelming to think about how to overcome deep-seated systematic racism and I agree that it advocates and emphatic, person centered social workers. I would also say that we as a people need to organize and put pressure on our elected officials to do the right things .
–Cuffia
To overcome the current practice and the long-standing legacy of over-criminalization of mental illness, we have to create a system that will have appropriate resources and standards for those individuals with mental illness. To reduce involvement, support those who need services and promote fairness throughout the criminal justice system, leaders in the mental health system, law enforcement, officers, public defenders, advocates, and others in the criminal justice system must come together to create a system that will improve outcomes for all. This means creating community-based engaging services for those who need them and engaging, particularly law enforcement to understand mental health conditions for crisis and options for treatment alternatives to incarceration that are available in the community. Individuals with mental health conditions often face unfair treatment and abuse at every stage of involvement with the criminal justice system. Therefore, law enforcement needs to continue in advising those who are newcomers to the criminal justice system to attend CIT. This can be the first step in acknowledging how a person of authority should handle a situation with a person with mental illness.
Hey Vanessa, I agree with your statement of new law enforcement should be force to attend CIT to have some knowledge of what they to do with mental illness.
Police officers should have some knowledge of dealing with mental illnesses in prison. Having mental health problems is one of the biggest serious illness that will be with you for the rest of your life. They should have help all the time to at least fight it off little by little. The Crisis Intervention Training would be the best to solve any overcome of interactions between law enforcement officers and mentally ill patients. They should not get the same punishment as criminal who actually know what they are doing. They need help. They should get treated differently.
The police must train about CIT and will know how to handle those situations, they have to know in a way they don’t treat them like regular people due to their mental illness and have to be easier on them and have to be treated in a mental facility. And when stated in the video that mental people are in prison with normal people that is wrong because they have to be treated in a different way due to their mental state.
Mental Illness is a sensitive topic because you are dealing with people with some kind of mental disorder so they do not act like normal people.
The right way is training, training officers in charge of answering 911 calls is the key to preventing people with some kind of mental illness problem from ending up in prison or in the worst case dead. Many times we see how officers who are not trained to deal with extreme situations end up mishandling the situation. In my opinion, every officer should be trained with CIT every 3 or 6 months so that officers know how to handle an emergency interaction with a mental illness person.