Embodiments of Mental Illness in Prisons

• In Event: The Colors of Embodiment and Crime: Toward a Criminal Justice Ethic

Abstract

The mentally ill increasingly find themselves within the system of corrections, one largely unprepared and unable to help remediate their issues or ameliorate their suffering (Huxter, 2012). In this paper we argue that one of the reasons why this dynamic not only perpetuates but increases is due to the ways in which our society takes up the mentally ill body. Turning to popular media, we see that the mentally ill are often depicted as violent or dangerous (although there are certainly sympathetic portrayals as well, these are in the minority). Turning to observations of the mentally-ill homeless in cities, we find laws and policing policies to get them out of the public view. They, in essence, cease to be people with whom to relate, and have become instead objects to be managed, stored, and controlled. Ethically, such treatment seems problematic from the frame of the phenomenology of embodiment. When speaking of the body of the Other, Levinas offered that they are a “prolongation of my intent” meaning that it is through and with the other that we live our intentions in-relation. We suggest ways of living our compassionate intention with the mentally ill in prison.

Authors

• Olsen Mark, Utah Valley University

• Jan Spencer, Utah Valley University

• Emily Engstrom, Utah Valley University