Treatment of Adult Mentally Ill Offenders Research Paper

Treatment of Adult Mentally Ill Offenders - Research Paper Example   Besides, the number of inmates has tripled in the last threes decades with the notion that jails and prisons in the U.S have been converted to new mental hospitals. In recent research, an infamous prison in the state registered 33.8 % inmates who are mentally ill as per psychiatric diagnosis with chronic mental illness registering a higher rate as compared to non-chronic mental illnesses. Among all offenders in prison, depression, substance use disorders and anxiety or panic disorders are the three most common categories of diagnoses (Langan & David, 2002). â€Å"In the movie, The New Asylums by Miri Navasky & Karen O’Connor (2005), today there are over 500,000 mentally ill people who are held in jails and prison throughout America, 10 times the 50,000 that remain in the mental hospitals, although, most part of this movie shows higher percent of male inmates as compared to female inmates, numerous scenes of mentally ill people are common in the streets throughout America. According to Fred Cohen, Prison Mental Health Consultant, those who are mentally ill in the streets end up going to mental hospitals. ... Treatment in Prison All over the world and more so in the United States of America, there have been differing theories that concern the treatment that is given to prisoners as well as the services that should be provided to them in the current penal system (Langan & David,2002). In any criminal system, there are simple choices of the verdict that are given to the convicts; they are either reformative or punitive. The main aim of any reform system is to take criminals and ensuring that they are helped to move past the issues they have at hand. Punitive treatment entails the use of physical pain and torture as punishment for committing crimes. In fact, United States has been described as a punitive nation. Langan & David, 2002 argues that the main goal of the punitive system is to ensure that criminals see and understand that participating in crimes is not worth at all. A good example of a punitive method to offenders is by taking them to boot camps. Booty camps are governmental correc tional and penal systems that are predominant in the United States. Having modeled to resemble the armed forces recruit training camps, these programs are based on distress incarcerations that have military techniques. Offenders get punishment such as stocking although it has been scalped off in the recent past. In essence, critics say that these kinds of programs serve only to frustrate the offenders and do not make much distinction in their lives as is intended apart from having them pay for their crimes in harsh ways. In addition, most of the sentences that are given to these offenders cannot be easily reduced even if the offenders show sign of improvement or change. Rehabilitative penalty simply means re-enabling or making fit again prisoners to enable them to rejoin society.  Ã‚