From CBS:The city is making a new effort to channel mentally ill people who get arrested into treatment instead of jail, if they don’t need to be there, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday.
Citing statistics showing that people with mental health problems tend to spend extended time behind bars for lack of bail money, officials said they aimed to do better at assessing defendants’ psychiatric needs and meeting them in the least restrictive setting that’s appropriate.
“If more New Yorkers who need mental health care and community support can be helped to get their lives on track when they’ve run afoul of the law, we will all be better off,” Bloomberg said in a statement after announcing the initiative on his weekly radio show. “No one needs to be reminded anymore of just how important it is to get this group of people the care they need.”
Courts and jails in New York and around the country have grappled for years with how to handle growing numbers of mentally ill defendants. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated in 2006 that more than 1.2 million adults - or more than half of all inmates - were in state and federal prisons and local jails.
In New York City, some 36 percent of jail inmates have some level of mental illness, compared with less than 25 percent in 2005, officials said. And the average mentally ill inmate is behind bars for about twice as long as are other inmates facing comparable charges and bail, as those with psychiatric problems tend to have less ability to post bail, officials said.
Meanwhile, the city spends about three times as much supervising and caring for a seriously mentally ill inmate as it costs to house an inmate without psychiatric problems, officials said.
The new initiative will start next year and set out to work with 3,000 people annually, Bloomberg said.
11 comments:
If you're not crazy BEFORE going into a/the jail, you will DEFINITELY be crazy after coming out.
Jail/Prisons are FACTORIES OF HATE, FACTORIES OF VIOLENCE etc..
You think if someone puts you in some concrete modern gladiator stadium for, lets say 5 years, you're going to come out normal? It is HIGHLY unlikely.
Jails and prisons are social institutions that are supposed to "correct" people who violate laws. Jails and prisons are operated by the Department of Corrections.....
I've never met someone who has been incarcerated and has been "Corrected".
There are people who don't want to come up with bail money in order to get their meds and have help managing their ailments for free.
I remember one Legal Aid attorney who felt really good about himself when he got a judge to knock a ninety day sentence down to sixty days. When he went to tell the defendant, the defendant was angry at him ... why? The release date would be in February, and not March ... the defendant did not have any winter clothes and was counting on being in jail until the winter was over.
Does that include off the beam pols like "doofy" Dan Halloran?
That;s why we got Obamacare, so we can psychiatrically regulate the preachers and teacher who produce such creatures.
"Mentally ill defendants to get treatment"
What about mentally ill mayors???
this is the result of the "Public Interest Law"schools like Queens College law School ,now (C.U.N.Y.)
the so-called lawyers (liars) graduated from these schools advocate for the mentally ill in order to keep them on the streets. They are now called "THE HOMELESS) ,until one nut pushes you in front of a subway train.
What did the famous shoeless nut do with the boots that the young cop bought him ? He probably sold them for a sixpack.
Thank you Dean,C.U.N.Y. 1983,Charles Halpern......
Uh..."Johnny-one-note"...do you play any other tunes besides "Obamacare" on your air horn?
What a bitter life you must be leaing.
Correction to the above..."leading".
I find it very hard to believe that Bloomberg gives a rat's arze about the homeless or any other living person or thing. Put in another pedestrian walk Bloomie why don't ya' - the homeless LOVE to congregate there.
Bloomberg is probably trying to get his friends' kids jobs as psychologists before he leaves office.
#1....if you do the crime , you must do the time....i have no mercy for those who have demonstrated that they are a violent threat to the public.
the sentences for murder are too short and promote a repeat offense.
Eg. the Rochester , NY murderer of the two fireman, killing his sister , wounding of two other fireman and arsonist of many houses, brutally hammered his grandmother 17 years ago.
the decision to release him IS A CRIME. Who are the members of the prison and judicial system that granted him release.
we should know and fire them....
Anon No. 10:
All I know is that he was paroled in 1998. Who was the Governor who appointed the members of the Parole Board?
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