Poster #205 - The Criminalization of Mental Illness

• In Event: ASC Poster Session I

Abstract

In 1972, following passage of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967, Abramson (1972) coined the phrase “criminalization of mentally disordered behavior” when he observed that in the year following implementation of the act, the number of persons with mental illness entering the criminal justice system had doubled. In 1950, half a million people were treated in state mental hospitals. By 2016, there were 7,679 beds remaining in state hospitals resulting in substantial increases in the incarceration of individuals with serious mental illness. Today, in the United States, there are more people with serious mental illness in carceral institutions than in state psychiatric hospitals. In fact, researchers have assessed the percentage of persons with serious mental illness who are incarcerated in the United States to be 5 to 8 times higher than the general population. The degree to which seriously mentally ill inmates have penetrated the criminal justice system represents a “modern prison crisis”, the consequences of which are tragic. This presentation is a case study of the criminalization of mental illness and offers insight into the problematic legal, social, and political trends that resulted in an unprecedented number of mentally ill individuals being confined as prisoners.

Author

• Edward L. Bowman, Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania