Mental Illness In Prison Essay

Words: 1034
Pages: 5

Mental illness of incarcerated peoples Why do some humans torture, abuse, and kill others? What causes someone to get pleasure out of the pain of others? And why do the rest of us not? It may surprise you that mentally ill prisoners makeup over half the population in United States prisons, have prior sentences before diagnoses, and are victims of traumatic childhoods more often than not. Mentally ill prisoners should not be kept in the prison environment, which in itself can be damaging to someone's life. “More than 1.2 million people with mental illnesses are incarcerated in jails or prisons.”(Peterson, par 6) The numbers of those hospitalized I have observed are much less than those incarcerated. “In 2001, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill reported that the number of Americans with serious mental illnesses in prison was three times greater than the number hospitalized with such illnesses.”(Aufderheide and Brown 2) Prisons clearly have become the new mental hospitals. Some would argue that at least there is a place for them but data from the Bureau of Justice …show more content…
It’s not just childhood that creates a serial killer.” (24) Dennis Rader an “extraordinarily ordinary” psychopath. Married, two kids, church goer, and boy scout leader a seemingly outstanding citizen. Also known as “BTK”, which stands for bind, torture, and kill. This is not uncommon though. If one were to describe a psychopath they might describe them as antisocial or outcasts. “Psychopaths have low autonomic arousal. They don’t react and show a lot of affection or emotion. They don’t feel when or what people feel.”(21) Detached ways of feeling, psychopaths only “express” emotion to make an impression on those desired. This is where things get difficult, how do we know whether one is a psychopath if they display forced emotions causing us to believe that they are not? Therefore the mentally ill should be locked