More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons
Than Hospitals: A Survey of the States
E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.
Executive Director, Stanley Medical Research Institute,
and Board Member, Treatment Advocacy Center

Sheriff Aaron D. Kennard (retired), M.P.A.
Executive Director, National Sheriffs’ Association

Sheriff Don Eslinger,
Seminole County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office,
and Board Member, Treatment Advocacy Center

Richard Lamb, M.D.,
Professor of Psychiatry, University of
Southern California Keck School of Medicine,
and Board Member, Treatment Advocacy Center

James Pavle
Executive Director, Treatment Advocacy Center

May 2010

More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons
Than Hospitals: A Survey of the States

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D.
Executive Director, Stanley Medical Research Institute,
and Board Member, Treatment Advocacy Center
Sheriff Aaron D. Kennard (retired), M.P.A.
Executive Director, National Sheriffs’ Association
Sheriff Don Eslinger,
Seminole County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office,
and Board Member, Treatment Advocacy Center
Richard Lamb, M.D.,
Professor of Psychiatry, University of
Southern California Keck School of Medicine,
and Board Member, Treatment Advocacy Center
James Pavle
Executive Director, Treatment Advocacy Center

May 2010

I.

Executive Summary

(a) Using 2004–2005 data not previously published, we found that in the United States
there are now more than three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and
prisons than in hospitals. Looked at by individual states, in North Dakota there are
approximately an equal number of mentally ill persons in jails and prisons compared to
hospitals. By contrast, Arizona and Nevada have almost ten times more mentally ill
persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals. It is thus fact, not hyperbole, that
America’s jails and prisons have become our new mental hospitals.
(b) Recent studies suggest that at least 16 percent of inmates in jails and prisons have a
serious mental illness. In 1983 a similar study reported that the percentage was
6.4 percent. Thus, in less than three decades, the percentage of seriously mentally ill
prisoners has almost tripled.
(c) These findings are consistent with studies reporting that 40 percent of individuals with
serious mental illnesses have been in jail or prison at some time in their lives.
(d) It is now extremely difficult to find a bed for a seriously mentally ill person who needs
to be hospitalized. In 1955 there was one psychiatric bed for every 300 Americans. In
2005 there was one psychiatric bed for every 3,000 Americans. Even worse, the
majority of the existing beds were filled with court-ordered (forensic) cases and thus
not really available.
(e) In historical perspective, we have returned to the early nineteenth century, when
mentally ill persons filled our jails and prisons. At that time, a reform movement,
sparked by Dorothea Dix, led to a more humane treatment of mentally ill persons. For
over a hundred years, mentally ill individuals were treated in hospitals. We have now
returned to the conditions of the 1840s by putting large numbers of mentally ill persons
back into jails and prisons.
(f) Any state can solve this problem if it has the political will by using assisted outpatient
treatment and mental health courts and by holding mental health officials responsible
for outcomes. The federal government can solve this problem by conducting surveys to
compare the states; attaching the existing federal block grants to better results; and
fixing the federal funding system by abolishing the “institutions for mental diseases”
(IMD) Medicaid restriction.

1

II. Introduction
In the early years of the last century, the public was shocked to find that most
mentally ill persons were being housed in local jails and prisons. Such conditions were
regarded as inhumane, and a reform movement, led by Dorothea Dix, began. This
movement led to the building of state mental hospitals and the belief that mentally ill
persons deserved to be treated, not punished. The Appendix details this period, which
continued until the 1950s, when deinstitutionalization began.
Deinstitutionalization, the emptying of state mental hospitals, has been one of the
most well-meaning but poorly planned social changes ever carried out in the United States.
It was a product of the overcrowding and deterioration of hospitals; new medications that
significantly improved the symptoms of about half of patients; and a failure to understand
that many of the sickest patients were not able to make informed decisions about their own
need for medication. Deinstitutionalization drew enthusiastic support from fiscal
conservatives interested primarily in saving funds by shutting state hospitals, as well as
from civil rights advocates who believed that mental patients needed to be “liberated,” as
in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This merging of the political right and
left has made for strange—indeed, bizarre—bedfellows but has been a political juggernaut,
ensuring that deinstitutionalization will continue to take place, as it does even today,
despite clear evidence that for many patients it has been a disaster.1
California was in the vanguard of deinstitutionalization, as it has also been in the
vanguard of experiencing its untoward consequences. Ronald Reagan, as governor of
California, is often blamed for the failures of this policy, but such blame is not warranted.
The emptying of the state’s mental hospitals began in the mid-1950s under Republican
governor Goodwin Knight and continued in the 1960s under Democratic governor
Edmund “Pat” Brown. When Reagan took office as governor, the hospitals had already
been half-emptied. Reagan distinguished himself, however, by vowing to close the
hospitals completely.
By the early 1970s, it was becoming evident that the emptying of the state mental
hospitals had resulted in a marked increase in the number of mentally ill individuals in
jails and prisons. In 1972 Marc Abramson, a psychiatrist in San Mateo County, published
a study reporting a 36 percent increase in mentally ill prisoners in the county jail and a 100
percent increase in mentally ill individuals judged to be incompetent to stand trial. He also
quoted a state prison psychiatrist who said: “We are literally drowning in patients. . . .
Many more men are being sent to prison who have serious mental problems.”2
In 1973 hearings were held by the California State Senate to discuss this problem.
The San Joaquin County sheriff testified that “a good deal of mental illness is now being
interpreted as criminality.” In Santa Clara County, the problem of mentally ill inmates had
become “probably ten times larger” compared to the previous decade. However, when the
lawmakers asked Dr. James Stubblebine, the director of the California Department of
Mental Health, about the problem, he replied that “specific information is not available
which would indicate that more discharged patients are going into the jails.” This was
untrue; at the time Stubblebine testified, he had in his possession two studies, and soon

2

would have a third, contradicting his reply.3 Stubblebine was an avid enthusiast of
emptying the hospitals.
By the l980s observations and studies in many states indicated that an increasing
number of the discharged mental patients were ending up in jails and prisons. In California
in 1980 Gary Whitmer, a San Francisco social worker, published a study of “500
defendants in need of psychiatric treatment” and concluded that emptying the hospitals has
“forced a large number of these deinstitutionalized patients into the criminal justice
system.”4 In 1982 and 1983 Dr. Richard Lamb and his colleagues published two rigorous
studies of mentally ill inmates in the Los Angeles County Jail and cited multiple other
studies indicating that the problem was getting worse.5
(a) Studies done between 1980 and 1995
As reports of mentally ill persons in jails and prisons accumulated, additional
studies were undertaken. Among these was a 1983–1984 study carried out by Dr. Linda
Teplin in Chicago’s Cook County Jail. In a methodologically careful assessment of 728
jail admissions, Teplin reported that 6.4 percent of the prisoners had a serious mental
illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression) at the time of admission.6
This number was slightly higher than previous jail studies done in Denver (5 percent of
inmates were said to have a “functional psychosis”)7 and San Diego (5 percent of inmates
were said to be seriously mentally ill).8
In 1992 a jail survey was sent to each of the 3,353 jails in the United States. Jail
personnel were asked to assess what percentage of their inmates were seriously mentally
ill, defined as including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, “and related conditions,” and the
questionnaire included representative vignettes. A total of 1,391 usable responses were
returned. The average number of seriously mentally ill inmates was 7.2 percent, with a
range from 2 percent (jails in Wyoming) to 11 percent (jails in Connecticut, Colorado, and
Hawaii).9
(b) Studies done since 1995
During the 1980s and early 1990s, the pace of deinstitutionalization accelerated as
states realized they could save funds by closing hospital beds. In 1955 there had been
558,239 patients in the state mental hospitals; by the end of 1994, this figure had decreased
to 71,619, meaning that 87 percent of the hospital beds had been closed. The fate of the
discharged patients was foregone and obvious to anyone who cared to look. For example,
in a study of 65 patients discharged from an Ohio state hospital, 33 of them had become
homeless within six months of discharge and 21 of them had been arrested and jailed. The
authors noted: “Psychotropic medications had been prescribed upon their discharge from
the state hospital, but the respondents failed to take their medication and instead chose to
self-medicate with alcohol and street drugs.”10
Thus, it is not surprising that studies of mentally ill individuals in jails and prisons
done since the late 1990s have reported higher numbers than earlier studies had. A widely

3

publicized study done by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1998 reported that 16.3 percent
of inmates in jails and 16.2 percent in state prisons were “estimated to be mentally ill,”
based on the self-report of symptoms or of having been admitted to a psychiatric
hospital.11 The mentally ill individuals in prisons were also said to be more likely than
other prisoners to have been convicted of violent crimes, including homicides, and to
spend an average of 15 months longer in prison than other inmates.
In 2000 the American Psychiatric Association estimated that about 20 percent of
prisoners were seriously mentally ill, with 5 percent actively psychotic at any given time.12
In 2002 the National Commission on Correctional Health Care issued a report to Congress
in which it estimated that 17.5 percent of inmates in state prisons had schizophrenia,
bipolar disorder, or major depression.13 In 2003 Human Rights Watch, based on interviews
and visits to state and federal prisons, estimated that approximately 20 percent of the
prisoners were seriously mentally ill.14 A 2006 Department of Justice survey, based on a
selected sampling of inmates, reported that 24 percent of jail inmates and 15 percent of
state prison inmates “reported at least one symptom of a psychotic disorder.”15 Thus, these
studies all concluded that between 15 and 20 percent of jail and prison inmates had a
serious mental illness.
The most recent, and methodologically most impressive, survey of mental illness
among jail inmates was published in 2009. A total of 822 inmates in five jails (three in
New York and two in Maryland) were assessed using a structured diagnostic interview to
determine the existence of serious mental illness during the previous month. Serious
mental illness was defined as including schizophrenia, schizophrenia spectrum disorder,
schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, brief psychotic disorder, delusional disorder,
and psychotic disorder not otherwise specified. A total of 16.6 percent of the prisoners met
criteria for one of these diagnoses in the previous month, with the rate among women
(31.0 percent) being much higher than that among men (14.5 percent).16 This finding is
consistent with higher rates of mental illness among women reported in other jail and
prison surveys.
(c) Recent state reports
The higher rates of mental illness reported in the more recent jail and prison studies
are supported by anecdotal reports from individual states. Examples of such anecdotal
reports include:
Alabama: In 2007 state mental health commissioner John Houston said that the
percentage of state inmates thought to be mentally ill had risen from 5 percent in 1971 to
20 percent in 2007. “We are more or less criminalizing mental illness,” he said. “Jail
becomes a default mental-health facility because there are no resources to provide care.”17
California: In 2001 San Francisco jail officials said that the number of prisoners
requiring mental health treatment had increased 77 percent in the past 10 years. In 2005 in
Los Angeles, Sheriff Lee Baca said: “I run the biggest mental hospital in the country.”18

4

Colorado: At the 2007 conference of the County Sheriffs of Colorado, “it was a
consensus among those who attended the conference that coping with the challenges posed
by housing mentally ill inmates is the top problem facing sheriff’s offices statewide.”
Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor said: “By default, we’ve become the mental health
agencies of the individual counties.”19
Florida: In the Broward County Jail in 2007, 23 percent of the prisoners were
taking psychotropic medication. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said: “Our jails and
prisons collectively are the biggest mental-health facilities in the state. . . . Jails have
become asylums for thousands of inmates with mental illnesses whose problems and needs
far exceed what jails can provide.”20
Georgia: Between 1991 and 2001, the number of inmates with serious mental
illnesses in Georgia’s prisons more than quadrupled. In 2006, 16.5 percent of the prison
inmates “were receiving mental health services.” According to Dr. Dana Tatum, supervisor
of mental health care in the Gwinnett County Detention Center, the number of mentally ill
prisoners in the jail increased dramatically following the closure of the nearby state
psychiatric facility in the late 1990s. “The schizophrenic and chronically mental [patient]
population just exploded and we found ourselves being the hospital,” Tatum said.21
Kansas: In 2009 Undersheriff Michael Stover of the Sedgwick County Jail said that
“nearly a third of those in jail take some kind of medication for a mental illness.” “We’re
not trying to get into the business of running a state hospital,” Stover said. “But whether
they’re a hardened criminal with an underlying illness or commit crimes because of their
mental health, at some point they end up in local jails. You can’t manage them like you
can the general jail population.”22
Maryland: In 2005 in Montgomery County, “between 17 and 20 percent” of
prisoners in the county’s two jails “have a documented mental illness,” according to
Arthur Wallenstein, director of the County Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation.23
Michigan: In 2003 it was reported that a study of “jails in Wayne, Kent and Clinton
counties found that 51 percent of inmates suffered from mental illness, not including
substance abuse. The most common illnesses were major depression, bipolar disorder, and
schizophrenia and psychotic disorders.” A 2008 survey of state prisons reported that “20
percent of males and 25 percent of females have severe psychiatric symptoms.”24
Minnesota: According to a 2003 report, in Dakota County “about 30 percent of the
[jail] population is taking anti-psychotic drugs.” In Hennepin County “six out of the 10
medications given to inmates are for treatment of a mental illness.”25
Missouri: In 2007 it was reported that 19.7 percent of inmates in the five state
prisons “suffered from a mental illness.” In Boone County, Warren Brewer of the Sheriff’s
Office estimated the number of mentally ill inmates to be “at least 30 percent.”26
New York: In 2002 the Sheriffs Office in Onondaga County estimated that 20
percent of the inmates were “mentally ill”; in Monroe county the estimate was 30 percent.
In Niagara County, Sheriff Thomas Beilein estimated that 25 percent of jail inmates “have

5

some sort of mental problem.” Beilein added: “They’ve closed the mental hospitals and
pushed those people into the jails. It’s appalling that they are here.”27
Ohio: The Corrections Center of Northeast Ohio reported in 2009 that 25 percent
of its inmates were on psychotropic medications; the cost of the drugs accounted for half
of the medical budget. In the Lucas County Jail, 23 of the 24 inmates in the psychiatric
unit were repeat offenders. Valerie Sylvester, the jail’s director of medical services,
attributed the problem to the closing of psychiatric hospitals. “Deinstitutionalization was
the worst thing that could ever happen,” she said.28
Oklahoma: Between 1998 and 2005, the number of inmates in the state prisons “on
psychiatric medications more than tripled.” In one prison, it was reported in 2006 that
40 percent of the inmates were on psychiatric medication.29
Oregon: In 2003 in the Umatilla County Jail, 39 percent of the inmates were taking
psychotropic medications. Sheriff John Trumbo noted: “State hospital doesn’t have the
resources to treat these patients any more so we have to keep them. Our staff receives
some training in working with the mentally ill, because we have to address these needs.”30
Texas: In 2008, 1,900 out of 11,000 inmates, or 17.3 percent, in the Harris County
Jail were on psychotropic medications. Spending on mental health care in the jail had risen
to $24 million per year, “and the combined cost of incarcerating and treating the mentally
ill is $87 million annually.” A county official noted: “The jails have become the
psychiatric hospitals of the United States.”31
Virginia: In 2008 a state mental health commission estimated that “15 percent of
all inmates in states prisons and jails are seriously mentally ill.” Roanoke County Sheriff
Gerald Holt said it was 25 to 30 percent in his jail. In Virginia Beach, Sheriff Paul
Lanteigne “estimated that it typically takes at least six months to find an available bed for
a deranged inmate at Eastern State Hospital or a nearby psychiatric center. Scores of
people are sitting in his jail today, long after they would normally have been released on
minor charges, because they are too sick to be freed.”32
In summary, national surveys and individual state reports both suggest that at
least 15–20 percent of jail and prison inmates are seriously mentally ill. We have thus
effectively returned to conditions that last existed in the United States in the 1840s
(Figure 1).
III. Methodology of the Present Study
Given the evidence for the decreasing availability of psychiatric beds for
individuals with serious mental illnesses and evidence for an increasing number of such
individuals being incarcerated in local jails and state prisons, we undertook a study to
examine this problem in each state. The question we asked was: What are the odds of a
person with a serious mental illness being in a jail or prison compared to a psychiatric
hospital?

6

Data on prisoners were obtained from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ “Prison and
Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005,” a survey based on data obtained for June 30, 2005.33 The
states of Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Hawaii each have a
combined jail and prison system. The numbers in Table 1 are the combined totals for all
jails and state prisons in that state; federal prisons were not included.
For this study the percentage of jail and prison inmates assumed to be seriously
mentally ill was 16 percent. This assumption was based on the 2009 study by Steadman et
al. of five jails in New York and Maryland, discussed in the previous section, in which it
was reported that 16.5 percent of inmates had a serious mental illness, narrowly defined.34
Based on the data available, we believe an assumption of 16 percent is reasonable, if
perhaps conservative. The main limitation of this statistic is that it has to be used for every
state, when in fact it seems likely that some states are doing a better job than others in
treating mentally ill individuals in the community so that they do not end up in jail or
prison. However, data on individual state differences are not available; one of the
recommendations of this study is that such data be collected as part of the five-year census
of jails and prisons carried out by the Department of Justice. There are also known to be
intra-state differences in community psychiatric care from county to county. Thus, some
states that rank poorly in this survey may have good mental illness treatment programs in
some counties.
Data on the number of inpatients in public psychiatric hospitals, private psychiatric
hospitals, and the psychiatric units of general hospitals were obtained from the 2004
Inventory of Mental Health Organizations (IMHO), carried out by the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) under the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.35 The data from the 2004 survey have not been previously
published and are considered to be provisional. The number of inpatients was obtained for
the first day of the hospitals’ reporting year, in most cases January 1 or July 1. Given the
shortage of psychiatric beds in the United States, most patients who are admitted to
hospitals are seriously mentally ill, although a minority of patients in private hospitals and
the psychiatric units of general hospitals are not, e.g., may have a diagnosis of substance
abuse only. The inclusion of all beds, both public and private, in the present survey makes
the availability of psychiatric beds appear better for individuals with serious mental
illnesses than it actually is.
In addition, the number of beds in this survey includes all forensic psychiatric beds,
which are occupied by seriously mentally ill individuals who have been court-ordered to
the hospitals. These include individuals who were found incompetent to stand trial, found
not guilty by reason of insanity, sexually violent predators, etc. In California, for example,
these individuals occupy 90 percent of the beds in the remaining state psychiatric
hospitals.36 Such beds are essentially tied up with court-ordered, long-term patients and
thus not really available for new admissions. By including these beds in the present
survey, the survey further understates the seriousness of the problem of lack of psychiatric
beds.

7

IV. Results of the Study
In 2004 in the United States, there were 100,439 psychiatric beds available in
public and private psychiatric hospitals and in the psychiatric units of general hospitals.
Since the population of the country was just over 300 million, that means that there was
approximately one psychiatric bed available for every 3,000 people. This contrasts to the
situation in the United States in 1955, when there was one public psychiatric bed available
for every 300 people. Thus, even not including private psychiatric hospital beds or the beds
on psychiatric units of general hospitals in 1955, an individual with a serious mental illness
was 10 times more likely to find a psychiatric bed for treatment in 1955 than in 2004.
It is also useful to compare the present paucity of beds with the situation in the
1840s, when Dorothea Dix was decrying the practice of keeping mentally ill individuals in
jails rather than in hospitals. As noted in the Appendix, in 1850 there was approximately
one public psychiatric bed available for every 5,000 people. Currently, there is one bed
available for every 3,000 people, including the beds in private psychiatric hospitals and on
the psychiatric units of general hospitals. In fact, many beds in these latter units are not
really available to individuals with serious mental illnesses, because most such individuals
do not have insurance to cover the costs. Therefore, the situation faced by individuals with
serious mental illnesses today is remarkably similar to individuals with serious mental
illnesses in the 1840s—a shortage of psychiatric beds and an abundance of jail and prison
cells. If Dorothea Dix came back today, she would feel right at home.
Regarding the odds of a seriously mentally ill individual being in jail or prison
compared to a hospital, the odds for all 50 states was 3.2 to 1 that they would be in a jail or
prison. This means that in 2004–2005, throughout the United States, there were more than
three times more individuals with serious mental illnesses in jails and prisons than in
hospitals.
The only state in which the odds were 1 to 1 was North Dakota; in that state, a
mentally ill individual had an equal chance of being in a hospital compared to a jail or
prison. At the other extreme, in Nevada (9.8 to 1) there were almost 10 seriously mentally
ill persons in jails and prisons for every one in a hospital. The situation in Arizona (9.3 to
1) was almost as bad as in Nevada, and Texas (7.8 to 1) was not far behind. The other
states in the bottom quarter of the rankings were South Carolina (5.1 to 1), Georgia (5.1 to
1), Florida (4.9 to 1), Louisiana (4.6 to 1), Idaho (4.6 to 1), Michigan (4.3 to 1), Colorado
(4.1 to 1), Ohio (4.0 to 1), and Utah (4.0 to 1).
Is there any correlation between the states that are more likely to have mentally ill
individuals in hospitals and states that are spending more money on their mental health
treatment system? Expenditure data by state are available for fiscal 2002.37 Using a
statistical test, there was a very strong correlation between those states that have more
mentally ill persons in jails and prisons and those states that are spending less money on
mental health services (Spearman’s rho = 0.4974; p < 0.001). Among the ten states most
likely to be using hospitals, six were also among the ten states spending the most money
per capita. Conversely, among the ten states mostly likely to have mentally ill individuals
in jails and prisons, five were also among the states spending the least money per capita.

8

The exception in the latter group was Arizona, which ranked relatively high (14th) in
spending but ranked next to last (49th) in likelihood of having mentally ill individuals in
hospitals.
Another way to look at this problem is to ascertain what percentage of individuals
with serious mental illnesses are put in jail. A 1991 survey of 1,401 members of the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), an advocacy group for families of
individuals with serious mental illnesses, reported that 40 percent of the mentally ill family
members had been in jail at some point in their lives.38
Thus, it is fact, not hyperbole, that jails and prisons have become America’s mental
hospitals. The country has reverted to a situation last seen in the early 19th century, when
reformers such as Dorothea Dix inspired state legislatures to build psychiatric hospitals in
which to place mentally ill individuals so that they would be treated more humanely.
V. Problems Associated with Having Seriously Mentally Ill Persons in Jails and Prisons
Jails and prisons are not created to be de facto mental hospitals. They are not
structurally appropriate for patients, and the staffs are not recruited as psychiatric
caretakers. Not surprisingly, there are many problems associated with placing large
numbers of seriously mentally ill individuals into jails and prisons. Among these problems
are the following:
(a) Mentally ill offenders are “frequent flyers”: Since the county and state corrections
systems are separate from, and usually not coordinated with, the mental health system,
most mentally ill persons leaving jails and prisons receive little, if any, psychiatric
aftercare. Consequently the recidivism rate is thought to be higher than it is for other
released prisoners.
In jails and prisons, repeat offenders are commonly referred to as “frequent
flyers.” In the Los Angeles County Jail, 90 percent of mentally ill inmates are repeat
offenders, with 31 percent having been incarcerated ten or more times. Houston’s
Harris County Jail in 2008 included two mentally ill individuals who had been booked
30 times since 1999 and 45 times since 2001. Also included was a 34-year-old woman
diagnosed with schizophrenia who had been charged with 12 felonies and 31
misdemeanors. At the Palm Beach County Jail, Jonathan Goode, diagnosed with
schizoaffective disorder, was booked 49 times in 40 months between March 2006 and
July 2009. The record for repeat offenders probably belongs to Gloria Rodgers, who
after 259 arrests in Memphis, was finally committed to a state psychiatric hospital.
Like many frequent flyers, Rodgers considered the Shelby County Jail to be her home.
Similarly, Linda Kraige, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has been in Virginia’s
Roanoke County Jail so many times that, when asked to name her best friend, she
named the deputy at the jail.39
(b) Mentally ill inmates cost more: Mentally ill inmates cost more than non–mentally ill
inmates for a variety of reasons, including increased staffing needs. In Broward
County, Florida, it costs $80 a day to house a regular inmate but $130 a day for an

9

inmate with mental illness. In Texas prisons “the average prisoner costs the state about
$22,000 a year,” but “prisoners with mental illness range from $30,000 to $50,000 a
year.” Psychiatric medications are a significant part of the increased costs; in July of
2002 at Ohio’s Clark County Jail, prescription drugs costs for inmates exceeded the
costs of feeding inmates. Psychiatric examinations are also expensive. In Palm Beach
County, each time Jonathan Goode was arrested he was required to have a psychiatric
exam, each costing $2,000, producing an expenditure of $98,000 over 40 months.
Finally, there is the cost of an increasing number of lawsuits, such as the suit brought
in New Jersey in 2006 by the family of a “65-year-old mentally ill stockbroker [who
was] stomped to death in the Camden County Jail.”40
(c) Mentally ill inmates stay longer: In Florida’s Orange County Jail, the average stay for
all inmates is 26 days; for mentally ill inmates, it is 51 days. In New York’s Riker’s
Island Jail, the average stay for all inmates is 42 days; for mentally ill inmates, it is 215
days. The main reason mentally ill inmates stay longer is that many find it difficult to
understand and follow jail and prison rules. In one study, jail inmates were twice as
likely (19 percent versus 9 percent) to be charged with facility rule violations. In
another study in the Washington State prisons, mentally ill inmates accounted for 41
percent of infractions even though they constituted only 19 percent of the prison
population. Another reason mentally ill inmates stay longer is that they are often held
for months awaiting the availability of a bed in a psychiatric hospital.41
(d) Mentally ill inmates are often major management problems: Because of their impaired
thinking, many inmates with serious mental illnesses are major management problems.
For example, in 2005 in Mississippi’s Hinds County Jail, one inmate was described as
having “tore up a damn padded cell that’s indestructible, and he ate the cover of the
damn padded cell. We took his clothes and gave him a paper suit to wear, and he ate
that. When they fed him food in a styrofoam container, he ate that. We had his stomach
pumped six times, and he’s been operated on twice.” In the Southern Ohio Correctional
Center in 2004, a mentally ill inmate who had been sent to jail for stealing a bicycle
was described as follows: “He was the type of individual who was very difficult to
work with. [He’s] been very aggressive towards staff, including, I believe, by spitting
on staff members and throwing body waste. And so there wasn’t a lot of empathy for
him. . . . The tendency would be for somebody like that to just [say], ‘Let’s lock him
away. . . . let’s just not have anything to do with him.” In Wisconsin a 2010 audit of
three state prisons reported that “between 55 percent and 76 percent of inmates in
segregation [isolation] are mentally ill.” 42
(e) Mentally ill inmates are more likely to commit suicide: Multiple studies have shown
that approximately half of all inmate suicides are committed by inmates who are
seriously mentally ill. A 2002 study in Washington State reported that “the prevalence
of mental illness among inmates who attempted suicide was 77 percent, compared with
15 percent [among inmates] in the general jail population.” In California in 2002, the
Los Angeles Times headlined: “Jail Suicides Reach Record Pace in State,” and added:
“Some experts blame the recent surge on forcing more of the mentally ill behind
bars.”43

10

(f) Mentally ill inmates are sometimes abused: Men and women who work as correctional
officers in jails and prisons apply for the job expecting to work with criminals, not
individuals with serious mental illnesses. Many of the correctional officers do not
understand, and have little or no training in, how to work with mentally ill inmates.
Pete Earley, in his excellent book about mentally ill people in jails, described a
conversation he had with correctional officers in Miami’s Dade County Jail:
I was told the inmate had been punched several times in his kidney
area and his arm had been twisted behind his back while, as one officer
said, “he was given a talk-to about his lack of respect and manners.”
. . . “You need to instill fear in these inmates or they won’t listen to
you,” one explained. “Especially crazy inmates, ’cause if you don’t
scare them, then they will hurt you.” . . . “We don’t have any way to
control these inmates except with behavior modification, which is a
nice way to say: putting our hands on them if they get out of line. I
mean, how else can we keep them under control? You tell me?”44
VI. Possible Solutions
Emptying America’s mental hospitals without ensuring that the discharged patients
received appropriate treatment in the community has been an egregious mistake. For the
approximately half of discharged patients who have ended up homeless or in jails and
prisons, it has been a personal tragedy. Although deinstitutionalization was well
intentioned, the failure to provide for the treatment needs of the patients has turned this
policy into one of the greatest social disasters of the 20th century. It is an ongoing disaster
because states are continuing to close psychiatric hospital beds, with present administrators
of state mental health programs seemingly oblivious to the problems they are causing.
The present mental health system appears to be bankrupt of ideas for fixing this
disaster. In Florida, Dade and Broward Counties are designing “the first county jails ever
to be built specifically for inmates with chronic and severe mental illness.”45 In Maine it
has been proposed to close some jails and transform them “into short-term lockups or
specialty facilities for people with mental illnesses.”46 In Montana a proposal has been
made to open “a special prison for the mentally ill who are now housed in the regular
prison.”47 In Pennsylvania “lawmakers are considering a novel idea to deal with prison
overcrowding . . . [by] moving prisoners with mental illnesses into state mental
hospitals.”48
In New York State, lawmakers essentially have done this. Marcy State Psychiatric
Hospital was shut down many years ago and turned over to the State Department of
Corrections to become the Marcy Correctional Facility. Then, in December 2009, it was
announced that the Marcy Correctional Facility would open a 100-bed Residential Mental
Health Unit for inmates with serious mental illness. Thus, seriously mentally ill individuals
who were once treated in the psychiatric hospital may end up being treated in exactly the
same building, except that now it is called a prison. Office of Mental Health Commissioner
Michael Hogan lauded the special unit as “a collaborative and innovative approach that to

11

our knowledge is the first of its kind anywhere.” And Governor David Paterson said: “This
cutting-edge program represents government at its best.”49 Government at its best? In less
than 200 years, we have taken mentally ill individuals who were in jails and prisons;
transferred them to mental hospitals; then we closed down the mental hospitals, thereby
forcing the mentally ill individuals back to jails and prisons. This seems like a classic case
study on how not to execute public administration, a never-ending cycle of failed policies.
This is government at its worst.
If administrators at the state and federal level are looking for real solutions, they
should consider the following possibilities:
(a) Use assisted outpatient treatment (AOT): We need to make sure that seriously mentally
ill individuals being released from hospitals, jails, or prisons get the treatment they
need to not relapse. A proven way to do this is to utilize assisted outpatient treatment
(AOT), which requires selected seriously mentally ill persons to take medication under
court order as a condition for living in the community. In two studies, AOT has been
demonstrated to be very effective in reducing the arrest rate of mentally ill persons. In
North Carolina a randomized study reported that patients “with a prior history of
multiple hospitalizations combined with prior arrests and/or violent behavior” had a
reduction in arrests from 45 percent to 12 percent in one year while participating in
AOT.50 In New York the percentage of mentally ill individuals arrested decreased from
30 percent to 5 percent, and the percentage of those incarcerated decreased from 23
percent to 3 percent while on AOT.51 In both studies, AOT was also accompanied by a
major reduction in alcohol and drug abuse. AOT has also been shown to dramatically
decrease psychiatric rehospitalization as well as homelessness, risk of suicide, and
episodes of violent behavior among individuals with serious mental illnesses.52, 53, 54,
55, 56, 57, 58

(b) Use mental health courts: We should expand the use of Mental Health Courts, which
essentially give offenders a choice between following a treatment plan (including the
taking of medication) or going to jail. Studies have shown that mental health courts are
effective.59, 60 The court thus becomes the de facto treating authority, a task originally
assigned to the failed psychiatric outpatient clinics and community mental health
centers.
(c) Conduct unannounced surveys: The Department of Justice or Institute of Medicine
should carry out an unannounced survey in each state approximately every five years,
enumerating the number of seriously mentally ill prisoners in jails and prisons. Then
tie the federal mental health block grant to the results by state, with states having the
fewest mentally ill prisoners getting the most money.
(d) Shift the funds: States should require that for each additional state-funded psychiatric
bed that is closed, the projected savings should be transferred from the budget of the
Department of Mental Health to the Department of Corrections. States should also
require that county departments of mental health pay the local corrections department
for the treatment costs of all seriously mentally ill jail inmates.

12

(e) Fix the federal funding system: The present funding system for mental health services
is a large part of the problem. Federal Medicaid is the single largest source of funds,
especially the restriction for using Medicaid funds to support mentally ill individuals in
“institutions for mental diseases” (IMDs). The present fiscal incentives encourage
states to empty hospitals, even if the patients end up in jails or homeless; there are no
fiscal incentives to follow up and make sure the patients receive care once they leave
the hospitals. The federal government could take a major step toward fixing the system
if they repealed the Medicaid IMD restriction.
(f) Reform the treatment laws: States should reform their mental health treatment laws so
that treatment interventions can be made based on need for treatment standards rather
than on dangerousness. Many times, it is this very dangerousness standard that
necessitates law enforcement involvement. Mentally ill individuals should be able to
access treatment before they become dangerous or commit a crime, not after.
Finally, as Newsday noted: “We should not pine for the ‘good old days’ before
deinstitutionalization. But we should ask ourselves how a good idea went so terribly
wrong.”61

Figure 1
20%

Percentage of Jail and Prison Inmates
With Serious Mental Illness

15%

10%

5%

0%
1840

1880

1920
Year

1960

2000

*1840 estimate based on qualitative reports from that time

13

Appendix: Where We Started
In the United States, the first public outcry against putting mentally ill individuals
into jails and prisons occurred in the early years of the 19th century. Louis Dwight, a
Congregationalist minister in Massachusetts, was shocked by what he saw when he began
taking Bibles to prisoners in jails. In response to Dwight’s advocacy, in 1827 the state
legislature appointed a committee to investigate; the committee recommended that
confinement in jails of mentally ill persons be made illegal and that those in jails be
transferred to hospitals. Shortly thereafter the legislature approved the erection of the State
Lunatic Asylum at Worcester for 120 patients.62
Dorothea Dix, the most famous and successful psychiatric reformer in American
history, picked up where Dwight left off. During 1841 and 1842, she visited every jail in
Massachusetts and documented the mistreatment of mentally ill prisoners. The following
year, she presented her findings to the state legislature: “Men of Massachusetts, I beg,
I implore, I demand . . . Raise up the fallen; succor the desolate; restore the outcast; defend
the helpless.”63 Dix extended her crusade to many other states and by 1847 had visited 300
county jails and 18 state prisons. Her efforts led to the building of many new state mental
hospitals.
At the time Dix was advocating on behalf of mentally ill persons incarcerated in
jails and prisons, there was approximately 1 public psychiatric bed available for every
5,000 people in the population (the 1850 census, the first reliable enumeration of mentally
ill persons in the United States, counted 4,730 insane persons in the total population of
23,261,000). A century later, in 1955, prior to the beginning of deinstitutionalization of
mental patients in the United States, there was approximately 1 public psychiatric hospital
bed available for every 300 people in the population (559,000 patients in state and county
mental hospitals in a total population of 165,000,000).64 During those 100 years, there
were some changes in diagnostic nomenclature, but public psychiatric hospital beds were
largely reserved for individuals with serious mental illnesses, specifically schizophrenia,
schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and major depression.
The advocacy efforts of Dorothea Dix and her colleagues to move mentally ill
persons from jails and prisons to mental hospitals were largely successful. The 1880
census of mentally ill persons, the most complete survey ever carried out in the United
States, identified 40,942 “insane persons” in “hospitals and asylums for the insane.” It also
reported finding only 397 “insane persons” in jails and prisons, constituting less than
1 percent (0.7 percent) of the jail and prison population.65 Other studies done between
1880 and 1960 also found comparatively low prevalence rates of mentally ill persons in
jails and prisons. For example, a 1930 study of almost 10,000 arrestees reported that just
1.5 percent of them were psychotic at the time of arrest.66 Thus, for almost 100 years, the
problem of mentally ill persons in jails and prisons appeared to have been solved. These
individuals were treated as patients, not as criminals, and were sent to mental hospitals,
although the hospitals had little treatment to offer them at that time.

14

In 1939 Lionel Penrose, a British psychiatrist and mathematician, published a
paper on the relationship between the population of psychiatric hospitals and that of
prisons. He postulated that the two populations were inversely correlated: as one
decreases, the other increases.67 It has become known as the balloon theory—push in on
one side and the other side bulges out. What Penrose did not know when he published his
paper was that the United States was about to embark on a grand social experiment—
deinstitutionalization—that would test his theory.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Laura Milazzo-Sayre and Joanne Atay at SAMHSA, who
provided the 2004 psychiatric patient data. Paige Harrison and Margaret Noonan at the
Bureau of Justice Statistics kindly guided us through the prisoner data. We also thank Dr.
Faith Dickerson, who provided statistical assistance, and Judy Miller, who provided
administrative assistance.

1

For a detailed history of deinstitutionalization, see E. Fuller Torrey, Nowhere To Go: The Tragic Odyssey of
the Homeless Mentally Ill (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), chapters 3 and 4.
2
M. F. Abramson, The criminalization of mentally disordered behavior: possible side-effect of a new mental
health law, Hospital and Community Psychiatry 1972;23:101–105.
3
E. Fuller Torrey, The Insanity Offense: How America's Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill
Endangers Its Citizens (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), p. 46. The two studies were: Albert H. Urmer, A
Study of California’s New Mental Health Law (Chatsworth, Calif.: ENKI Research Institute, 1971); A. R.
Link, L. McMaster, CSEA legal brief presented in the California Superior Court, 1972; Abramson, The
criminalization of mentally disordered behavior; The Burden of the Mentally Disordered on Law
Enforcement (Chatsworth, Calif.: ENKI Research Institute, 1973).
4
G. E. Whitmer, From hospitals to jails: the fate of California’s deinstitutionalized mentally ill, American
Journal of Orthopsychiatry 1980;50:65–75.
5
H. R. Lamb and R. W. Grant, The mentally ill in an urban county jail, Archives of General Psychiatry
1982;39:17–22; H. R. Lamb and R. W. Grant, Mentally ill women in a county jail, Archives of General
Psychiatry 1983;40:363–368.
6
L. A. Teplin, The prevalence of severe mental disorder among male urban jail detainees: comparison with
epidemiologic catchment area program, American Journal of Public Health 1990;80:663–669.
7
G. Swank and D. Winer, Occurrence of psychiatric disorder in a county jail population, American Journal
of Psychiatry 1976;133:1331–1333.
8
M. A. Schuckit, G. Herrman, J. J. Schuckit, The importance of psychiatric illness in newly arrested
prisoners, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 1977;165:118–125.
9
E. Fuller Torrey, Joan Stieber, Jonathan Ezekiel et al., Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill: The Abuse
of Jails as Mental Hospitals (Public Citizen’s Health Research Group and the National Alliance for the
Mentally Ill, 1992).
10
J. R. Belcher, Are jails replacing the mental health system for the homeless mentally ill? Community
Mental Health Journal 1988;24:185–195.
11
P. M. Ditton, Mental health and treatment of inmates and probationers, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special
Report, July 1999.
12
American Psychiatric Association, Psychiatric Services in Jails and Prisons, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.:
American Psychiatric Association, 200), Introduction, xix.
13
National Commission on Correctional Health Care, The Health Status of Soon-to-be-Released Inmates: A
Report to Congress, March 2002, vol. 1, p. 22. The cited data are based on B. M. Veysey and G. Bichler-

15

Robertson, Prevalence estimates of psychiatric disorders in correctional settings, The Health Status of Soonto-be-Released Inmates: A Report to Congress, April 2002, vol. 2. Volume 1 is available online at
http://www.ncchc.org/pubs/pubs_stbr.vol1.html, and Volume 2, at
http://www.ncchc.org/pubs/pubs_stbr.vol2.html, both accessed last on March 16, 2010.
14
Human Rights Watch, Ill Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness (Washington, D.C.:
Human Rights Watch, 2003).
15
D. J. James and L. E. Glaze, Mental health problems of prison and jail inmates, Bureau of Justice Statistics
Special Report, September 2006, revised December 14, 2006.
16
H. J. Steadman, F. C. Osher, P. C. Robbins et al., Prevalence of serious mental illness among jail inmates,
Psychiatric Services 2009;60:761–765.
17
Associated Press, Official says state prisons like a ‘mental health center,’ Athens [AL] New Courier,
December 21, 2007.
18
P. Hoge, Squalor in the streets, San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 2001; S. Lopez, Mentally ill in the
jail? It’s a crime, Los Angeles Times, December 11, 2005.
19
P. Malone, Mentally ill inmates pose big problems, sheriffs say, Pueblo [CO] Chieftain, September 22,
2007.
20
J. Mozingo, Jailing the ill, Miami Herald, November 15, 2007; R. W. Adams, Mentally ill jam jails:
hospitals full, inmates locked in place, Lakeland [FL] Ledger, April 30, 2006.
21
R. L. Elliott, Jailing mentally ill for minor offenses helps no one, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 4,
2002; A. Simmons, Prisons see more inmates requiring mental health care, Gwinnett [GA] Daily Post, July
30, 2006.
22
D. Gruver, Sedgwick County considers jail pod for mentally ill inmates, Wichita Eagle, April 30, 2009.
23
C. Cosmos, Mentally ill behind bars on the rise; D.C. tackles a trend, [Washington DC] Street Sense,
January 10, 2005, http://www.streetsense.org/article_mentalillness.jsp, last accessed January 10, 2005.
24
M. Schultz, New judge focuses on mental health; plan would divert criminals from jail and into treatment,
Detroit News, August 17, 2003; Majority of mentally ill inmates don’t get treatment, University of Michigan
News Service, April 7, 2010, http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7620, last accessed
April 12, 2010.
25
L. Donovan, Mom’s case puts focus on jailing the mentally ill, [St. Paul, MN] Pioneer Press, September 8,
2003.
26
A. Hermes, Boone County struggles to meet mental health care needs for inmates, Missourian, December
17, 2007.
27
L. Michel, Jails struggle with a flood of mentally ill offenders, Buffalo News, July 22, 2002.
28
N. Satija, Toledo area jails facing growing numbers of the mentally ill: inmate influx is attributed to fewer
hospitals, Toledo Blade, August 30, 2009.
29
G. Fields, No way out: trapped by rules, the mentally ill languish in prison, Wall Street Journal Online,
May 3, 2006, http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB114662497280042311.html, last accessed May 4, 2006.
30
F. Lockwood, “Nowhere to turn”: help for the mentally ill hard to come by, Hermiston [OR] Herald, May
30, 2003.
31
B. Murray, Finding escape behind bars: when jail is the only place mentally ill inmates get treatment, they
come back, and it costs $87 million, Houston Chronicle, July 21, 2008.
32
L. Hammack, Jail can offer temporary refuge for those suffering from mental illness, Roanoke Times,
October 15, 2007.
33
The prison and jail inmate statistics were obtained from Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, Prison and
Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006), Table 14. The prison
data are based on the National Prison Statistics obtained annually from each state. The jail data are based on
the 2005 Census of Jail Inmates, a survey done approximately every five years. Six states (Alaska,
Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont) operate joint prison and jail systems.
34
Steadman et al., Prevalence of serious mental illness among jail inmates.
35
IMHO Survey, 2004 (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, DHHS, unpublished).
36
California Department of Mental Health Weekly Report of State Hospitals Serving the Mentally Ill,
Sacramento, Calif., December 21, 2005.

16

37

Theodore Lutterman, Vera Hollen, Robert Shaw, Funding Sources and Expenditures of State Mental
Health Agencies: Fiscal Year 2002 (Alexandria, Va.: National Association of State Mental Health Program
Directors Research Institute, 2004).
38
Donald M. Steinwachs, Judith D. Kasper, Elizabeth A. Skinner, Final Report: NAMI Family Survey
(Arlington, Va.: National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, 1992).
39
Jails and mental illness, Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project,
http://consensusproject.org/infocenter/factsheets/fafct_jails, last accessed April 3, 2006; Murray, Finding
escape behind bars; E. Kleinberg, System at loss for solutions to multiple-time, small-time offenders, Palm
Beach Post, January 31, 2010; S. Downing, A third of inmates in county jails mentally ill, survey finds,
[Memphis, TN] Commercial Appeal, March 30, 1999; L. Hammack, Jail can offer temporary refuge for those
suffering from mental illness, Roanoke Times, October 15, 2007.
40
C. M. Miller and A. Fantz, Special “psych” jails planned, Miami Herald, November 15, 2007; E. Bender,
Community treatment more humane, reduces criminal-justice costs, Psychiatric News 2003;38:28; A. J.
Gottschlich and G. Cetnar, Drug bills at jail top food costs, Springfield [OH] News Sun, August 20, 2002;
Florida’s Baker Act needs reform: change law to put mentally ill in treatment, not jail [editorial], Miami
Herald, February 12, 2004; A. Guenther, Family sues Camco over prisoner’s death, [NJ] Courier Post, June
14, 2006.
41
Jails and mental illness, Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project,
http://consensusproject.org/infocenter/factsheets/fafct_jails, last accessed April 3, 2006; C. Turner, Ethical
issues in criminal justice administration, American Jails, January/February 2007; F. Butterfield, Study finds
hundreds of thousands of inmates mentally ill, New York Times, October 22, 2003.
42
J. Mitchell, Treatment, not jail, urged for mentally ill in Miss., Jackson [MS] Clarion Ledger, January 25,
2009; Frontline, The new asylums, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/press/2313.html, last
accessed March 16, 2010; J. Ridgeway, J. Casella, Locking down the mentally ill, The Real Cost of Prisons
Weblog, February 24, 2010, http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2010/02/locking_down_th.html, last
accessed April 12, 2010.
43
J. R. Goss, K. Peterson, L. W. Smith et al., Characteristics of suicide attempts in a large urban jail system
with an established suicide prevention program, Psychiatric Services 2002;53:574–579; J. Johnson, Jail
suicides reach record pace in state, Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2002.
44
Pete Earley, Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness (New York: G. P.
Putnam, 2006), p. 242.
45
Miller and Fantz, Special “psych” jails planned.
46
“Edge of crisis” for jails, [Lewiston, ME] Sun Journal, August 31, 2007.
47
J. McKee, Lack of mental-health treatment options clogs criminal justice system, Helena Independent
Record, October 2, 2007.
48
M. Scott, State hospitals as alternative to prison? WHYY News and Information, January 27, 2010,
http://whyy.org/cms/news/health-science/2010/01/27/state-hospitals-as-alternative-to-prison/29099, last
accessed March 18, 2010.
49
New York State Office of Mental Health press release, DOCS, OMH Open Residential Mental Health Unit
at Marcy Correctional Facility, December 15, 2009,
http://www.omh.state.ny.us/omhweb/news/2009/pr_rmhu.html, last accessed April 12, 2010.
50
J. W. Swanson, M. S. Swartz, R. Borum et al., Involuntary out-patient commitment and reduction of
violent behaviour in persons with severe mental illness, British Journal of Psychiatry 2000;176:324–331.
51
Kendra’s Law: Final Report on the Status of Assisted Outpatient Treatment (New York State Office of
Mental Health, March 2005).
52
J. C. Phelan, M. Sinkewicz, D. M. Castille et al., Effectiveness and outcomes of assisted outpatient
treatment in New York State, Psychiatric Services 2010;61:137–143.
53
G. Zanni and L. deVeau, Inpatient stays before and after outpatient commitment, Hospital and Community
Psychiatry 1986;37:941–942.
54
G. A. Fernandez and S. Nygard, Impact of involuntary outpatient commitment on the revolving-door
syndrome in North Carolina, Hospital and Community Psychiatry 1990;41:1001–1004.

17

55

M. R. Munetz, T. Grande, J. Kleist et al., The effectiveness of outpatient civil commitment, Psychiatric
Services 1996;47:1251–1253.
56
B. M. Rohland, The Role of Outpatient Commitment in the Management of Persons with Schizophrenia
(Iowa Consortium for Mental Health, Services, Training, and Research, May 1998).
57
M. S. Swartz, J. W. Swanson, H. R. Wagner et al., Can involuntary outpatient commitment reduce hospital
recidivism?: findings from a randomized trial with severely mentally ill individuals, American Journal of
Psychiatry 1999;156:1968–1975.
58
Marvin S. Swartz, Jeffrey W. Swanson, Henry J. Steadman et al., New York State Assisted Outpatient
Treatment Program Evaluation, Report to the New York State Office of Mental Health, June 30, 2009.
59
R. H. Lamb, L. E. Weinberger, Mental health courts as a way to provide treatment to violent persons with
severe mental illness, Journal of the American Medical Association 2008;300:722–724.
60
M. E. Moore, V. A. Hiday, Mental health court outcomes: a comparison of re-arrest and re-arrest severity
between mental health court and traditional court participants, Law and Human Behavior 2006;30:659–674.
61
H. Barr, Prisons can’t be mental hospitals, [New York] Newsday, April 14, 1999.
62
Gerald N. Grob, The State of the Mentally Ill (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 16–
17, 22, 24.
63
Dorothea Dix, On Behalf of the Insane Poor: Selected Reports (New York: Arno Press and the New York
times, 1971), 3, 25.
64
E. Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller, The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the
Present (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 218–222, App. C: Table 3.
65
Frederick H. Wine, Report on the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the
United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1888).
66
W. Bromberg and C. B. Thompson, The relation of psychosis, mental defect and personality types to
crime, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1937;28:70–88.
67
L. Penrose, Mental disease and crime: outline of a comparative study of European statistics, British
Journal of Psychiatry 1938;18:1–15.

18

Table 1.
State

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Total

Total number of
prisoners in jails and
state prisons,
June 30, 2005

40,561
4,678
47,974
18,693
246,317
33,955
19,087
6,916
148,521
92,647
5,705
11,206
64,735
39,959
12,215
15,972
30,034
51,458
3,608
35,601
22,778
67,132
15,422
27,902
41,461
4,923
7,406
18,265
4,184
46,411
15,081
92,769
53,854
2,288
64,123
32,593
19,318
75,507
3,364
35,298
4,827
43,678
223,195
11,514
1,975
57,444
29,225
8,043
36,154
3,515
1,999,491

Estimated number of
prisoners seriously
mentally ill
(16% of total)

6,490
748
7,676
2,991
39,411
5,433
3,054
1,107
23,763
14,824
913
1,793
10,358
6,393
1,954
2,556
4,805
8,233
577
5,696
3,644
10,741
2,468
4,464
6,634
788
1,185
2,922
669
7,426
2,413
14,843
8,617
366
10,260
5,215
3,091
12,081
538
5,648
772
6,988
35,711
1,842
316
9,191
4,676
1,287
5,785
562
319,918

Number of patients in
state, private, and
psychiatric units in
general hospitals,
2004

1,609
206
827
920
10,295
1,325
1,571
372
4,826
2,921
311
394
3,841
2,413
744
732
1,638
1,807
463
2,211
2,979
2,496
1,982
2,484
2,441
256
688
298
337
4,606
732
12,142
2,443
365
2,536
1,463
1,026
6,128
363
1,113
319
2,221
4,579
462
177
2,548
1,521
609
1,500
199
100,439

Odds of a seriously
mentally ill person
being in jail or prison
compared to in
hospital

4.0
3.6
9.3
3.3
3.8
4.1
1.9
3.0
4.9
5.1
2.9
4.6
2.7
2.6
2.6
3.5
2.9
4.6
1.2
2.6
1.2
4.3
1.2
1.8
2.7
3.1
1.7
9.8
2.0
1.6
3.3
1.2
3.5
1.0
4.0
3.6
3.0
2.0
1.5
5.1
2.4
3.1
7.8
4.0
1.8
3.6
3.1
2.1
3.9
2.8
3.2

to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to
to

1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

State Ranking based on
per capita expenditures
by state mental health
authority, FY 2002
(lowest no. spends most)

35
20
14
50
13
31
5
21
45
43
3
47
30
27
39
25
40
42
9
6
12
16
11
18
28
7
38
37
10
8
49
1
41
23
34
46
36
2
19
26
33
22
48
29
4
32
15
44
17
24

National Sheriffs Association
1450 Duke Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314
703-836-7827 ● www.sheriffs.org

Treatment Advocacy Center
200 North Glebe Road, Suite 730, Arlington, Virginia 22203
703-294-6001 ● www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org