Are Massachusetts Prisons Becoming the New Asylums?
▻http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/10/21/massachusetts-prisons-new-asylums
Prisons are designed to keep those convicted of a crime locked within secure walls—not to take the place of mental-health facilities. But over the past decade, that’s exactly what has happened. Some experts point the finger at finances; others at the closure of mental hospitals in the state. In any case, almost 25 percent of Massachusetts state prisoners are now classified as “open mental health cases” by the Department of Correction (DOC).
While a recent study by The Wall Street Journal puts the Bay State in the middle of the pack, nationwide, the Massachusetts DOC paints a bleak picture. An eye-popping 2,502 of 10,218 state prisoners were diagnosed with some form of mental illness for which they were receiving treatment in 2012, according to a DOC study from that year. June Binney, the Criminal Justice Project Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Massachusetts (NAMI Mass.), said in an email that she thought the numbers were even higher in 2013. “… [The] extent to which we tolerate the criminalization of people with mental illness is shameful,” she said.