Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Recidivism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recidivism. Show all posts

Sunday, December 18, 2016

There may be no worse place for mentally ill people to receive treatment than prison

By The Spotlight Team
The Boston Globe
Originally posted November 25, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Last year, more than 15,000 prisoners walked out of Massachusetts jails and prisons. More than one-third suffer from mental illness; more than half have a history of addiction. Thousands are coping with both kinds of disorders, their risk of problems amplified as they reenter society.

Within three years of being released, 37 percent of inmates who leave state prisons with mental illnesses are locked up again, compared with 30 percent of those who do not have mental health problems, according to a Department of Correction analysis of 2012 releases. Inmates battling addiction fare worse: About half are convicted of a new crime within three years, according to one state study. And inmates with a “dual diagnosis” of addiction and mental illness, like Nick Lynch, do the worst of all, national studies show.

Despite the vast need — and the potential payoff in reduced recidivism — mental health and substance abuse treatment for many Massachusetts inmates is chronically undermined by clinician shortages, shrinking access to medication, and the widespread use of segregation as discipline. The prison environment itself is a major obstacle to treatment: In a culture ruled by aggression and fear, the trust and openness required for therapy are exponentially harder to achieve.

And when their incarcerations end, many mentally ill and drug-addicted prisoners are sent back into the world without basic tools they need to succeed, such as ready access to medication, addiction counseling, or adequate support and oversight. Such omissions can be critical: The Harvard-led Boston Reentry Study found in 2014 that inmates with a mix of mental illness and addiction are significantly less likely than others to find stable housing, work income, and family support in the critical initial period after leaving prison, leaving them insecure, isolated, and at risk of falling into “diminished mental health, drug use and relapse.”

The article is here.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The Mind Report: Psychopaths, Morality, Neuroscience and Treatment

Laurie Santos (Yale) interviews Kent Kiehl (University of New Mexico) about his new book, The Psychopath Whisperer.  They discuss neuroscience on psychopathic prisoners, morality and the brain, and treatment research.


Saturday, May 17, 2014

U.S. Should Significantly Reduce Rate of Incarceration

Unprecedented Rise in Prison Population ‘Not Serving the Country Well,’ Says New Report

Press Release from the National Academy of Sciences
Released April 30, 2014

Given the minimal impact of long prison sentences on crime prevention and the negative social consequences and burdensome financial costs of U.S. incarceration rates, which have more than quadrupled in the last four decades, the nation should revise current criminal justice policies to significantly reduce imprisonment rates, says a new report from the National Research Council.

A comprehensive review of data led the committee that wrote the report to conclude that the costs of the current rate of incarceration outweigh the benefits.  The committee recommended that federal and state policymakers re-examine policies requiring mandatory and long sentences, as well as take steps to improve prison conditions and to reduce unnecessary harm to the families and communities of those incarcerated.  In addition, it recommended a reconsideration of drug crime policy, given the apparently low effectiveness of a heightened enforcement strategy that resulted in a tenfold increase in the incarceration rate for drug offenses from 1980 to 2010 — twice the rate for other crimes.

“We are concerned that the United States is past the point where the number of people in prison can be justified by social benefits,” said committee chair Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.  “We need to embark on a national conversation to rethink the role of prison in society.  A criminal justice system that makes less use of incarceration can better achieve its aims than a harsher, more punitive system. There are common-sense, practical steps we can take to move in this direction.”

The rest of the press release is here.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

California Senate leader proposes mental health program expansions

By Patrick McGreevy
The Los Angeles Times
Originally posted May 7, 2013

State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) on Tuesday proposed a plan to significantly increase mental health services in California with the goal of reducing the number of people ending up in prison, jail and emergency rooms.

Steinberg said the plan is in response to the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, in which a gunman killed 20 students and six adults, as well as a scandal involving a Nevada hospital dumping patients in other states, and the recent order by a federal court to further cut the number of inmates in California prisons

“It’s time for action,” he told reporters at the Capitol. Steinberg proposed expanding a program providing mental health services to prison parolees with mental illness from 1,500 to 5,000 people. Those in the program have a recidivism rate of 24%, nearly a third of the rate for those not in the program.

“While the governor appeals a federal court order to release thousands of state prison inmates, we also need to be smarter about crime by putting more resources into ensuring people who leave incarceration don’t commit new crimes and go back in,’’ Steinberg said.

The entire story is here.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Brain Scans Might Predict Future Criminal Behavior

Science Daily
Originally published March 28, 2013

A new study conducted by The Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, N.M., shows that neuroimaging data can predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will reoffend following release from prison.

The paper, which is to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, studied impulsive and antisocial behavior and centered on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that deals with regulating behavior and impulsivity.

The study demonstrated that inmates with relatively low anterior cingulate activity were twice as likely to reoffend than inmates with high-brain activity in this region.

"These findings have incredibly significant ramifications for the future of how our society deals with criminal justice and offenders," said Dr. Kent A. Kiehl, who was senior author on the study and is director of mobile imaging at MRN and an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico.

The entire story is here.

The journal abstract is here.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Nation's Jails Struggle With Mentally Ill Prisoners

By NPR staff

Three hundred and fifty thousand: That's a conservative estimate for the number of offenders with mental illness confined in America's prisons and jails.

More Americans receive mental health treatment in prisons and jails than in hospitals or treatment centers. In fact, the three largest inpatient psychiatric facilities in the country are jails: Los Angeles County Jail, Rikers Island Jail in New York City and Cook County Jail in Illinois.

"We have a criminal justice system which has a very clear purpose: You get arrested. We want justice. We try you, and justice hopefully prevails. It was never built to handle people that were very, very ill, at least with mental illness," Judge Steve Leifman tells Laura Sullivan, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered.

A failing system

When the government began closing state-run hospitals in the 1980s, people with mental illness had nowhere to turn; many ended up in jail. Leifman saw the problem first-hand decades ago in the courtroom. When individuals suffering from mental illness came before him accused of petty crimes, he didn't have many options.

"What we used to do, which I tell people was the definition of insanity [...] was they would commit an offense, the police would arrest them, they'd come to court, they'd be acting out so we would order two or three psychological evaluations at great expense, we would determine that they were incompetent to stand trial and we'd re-release them back to the community and kind of held our breath and crossed our fingers and hoped that somehow they'd get better and come back and we could try them," he says.

Instead, many disappeared and got re-arrested. Sometimes within minutes.

"They'd walk out the door, they were ill, they'd act out, because [the jail] is next to the courthouse there are several officers out there, and they'd get re-arrested," he says.

Not only was the system inefficient, it was costly as well. When Leifman asked the University of South Florida to look at who the highest users of criminal justice and mental health services in Miami-Dade County, researchers found the prime users were 97 people, individuals diagnosed primarily with schizophrenia.

"Over a five-year period, these 97 individuals were arrested almost 2,200 times and spent 27,000 days in the Miami-Dade Jail," Leifman says. "It cost the tax payers $13 million."

More information can be found here.