From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: The Decline of America:  Addendum on the Police-State (jails)
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 00:26:46 GMT

The Decline of America:  Addendum on the Police-State (jails)

[From Thurs, Sept 10, p A18, New York Times]

[Let us imagine we are reading an article making such grim revelations
about the former USSR, or Cuba...]

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A survey of american jails has found that more than half regularly
hold people with serious mental disorders on trivial charges or no
charges at all.

"We were shocked to find that 29 percent of the jails we asked
admitted to holding people in jail withou no charge at all, solely
becuse they are mentally ill," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the
Public Citizen Health Research Group,a  Washington health advocacy
group that conducted the survey of 1,391 local jails, the first of its
kind.

The group said an additional 23 percent of jails acknowledged holding
people who have serious mental disorders on minor charges like
disorderly conduct of vagrancy.

[...]

It is illegal in 35 states to hold the mentally ill without charges
except on a brief and emergency basis. In eight states and the
District of Columbia even emergency detention in jails [without
charges --HB] is prohibited.  Jailers say, they often have no
alternative because of the abscent of emergency mental health
treatment or reliable local treatment programs.

Thus, said, Dr. Wolfe, the jails are actually the nation's largest
mental institutions. A separate survey by the group found that the
Los Angeles County Jail has become the nation's largest mental
insitution.

Dr. Wolfe's group, along with the National Alliance for the Mentally
Ill, a support group for the mentally ill, sent questionnaires to all
3,353 local jails in the United States. About 41 percent of the jails
responded, represending more than 60 percent of the 430,000 people in
jail in the United States.

The report said that about 30,000 or 7.2 percent of all those now in
jail, are menic-depressive or schizophrenic or have other serious
mental disorders.

The survey had the support of the American Psychiatric Association,
and the American Jail Associatino helped in carrying it out.

"Jail administrtors are alarmed at the increasingrate in which the
mentally ill are being caught in the ever-broadening net of the
dcriminal justice system and booked into teh nation's jails for
extensive lengths of time," the jail association said in a statement.
"Jail has become the substitute institution of our neglect"

Dr. Joseph T. English, the president of hte American Psychitric
Association, said jailing the mentally ill is a "shockingly widespread
misuse of the nation's correctional system."

[Public Citizen is, suspiciously, not quoted anywhere besides the
opening sentence -- only the Establishment (and anti
"mad"-liberation-movement (send for email copy of _Why
De-institutionalization Failed_)) APA --HB]

Use the GET command (see below) with  PUBL-CTZ REPORT90
for a copy of (Ralph Nader -founded) _Public Citizen_, a recent yearly
report.

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