Study Says 15% of Inmates Are Mentally Ill

More than 15% of inmates in the nation’s jails and prisons, and almost 20% of those incarcerated for violent crimes, suffer from some form of mental illness, the Justice Department reported Sunday.

Many of the 283,800 mentally ill prisoners have long criminal records, a history of alcohol and drug use as well as physical and sexual abuse, according to the report, which was prepared by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. On average, they serve sentences 15 months longer than other inmates.

Mentally ill patients are disproportionately common in state prisons and local jails, where the report found they account for 16% of the population. The mentally ill make up 7% of all federal inmates.

The report was the Justice Department’s first comprehensive attempt to catalog the number of mentally ill inmates.

The study could not say whether their numbers have increased or decreased; nor did it address the reasons that mentally ill people end up behind bars or their effect on the prison system.

Some experts criticized the Justice Department for using a narrow definition of mental illness that resulted in what they considered an understatement of the mentally ill prison population.

The department classified as mentally ill those inmates who reported in a survey that they either suffered from a mental disorder or had spent a night in a mental hospital or treatment program.

Of the mentally ill inmates who responded to the Justice Department survey, 61% said they had received medication or counseling for their disorder while in prison. Only 41% of the equivalent population of local jails reported receiving some form of treatment.

Linda Teplin, a psychiatrist at Northwestern University’s medical school who has conducted studies of mental illness in prison populations, said many mentally ill inmates either choose not to report a disorder or are unaware of one.

Teplin said her research, which relies on random samples, shows that 80% of female inmates and 70% of male inmates have mental disorders.

Allen Beck, chief of corrections statistics for the Justice Department, said the discrepancy arose from Teplin’s research techniques.

In Los Angeles, complaints from mental health advocates prompted the Justice Department in 1996 to investigate the county jail system’s treatment of mentally ill inmates.

In September 1997, the department classified Los Angeles County’s treatment of mentally ill prisoners as “constitutionally inadequate.” The Justice Department threatened to sue the county if it did not improve cell conditions and record keeping, provide better medical care and offer more frequent testing for inmates with mental problems.

By February 1998, the county had moved those inmates into a new facility and had doubled the size of its mental health staff. The Justice Department, however, has called for further improvements, and its investigation continues.

About 2,000 of the county jail’s 21,000 inmates have mental disorders, said David Meyer, deputy director of the Los Angeles County mental health department. Meyer said he believes some of the mentally ill would be elsewhere if more community services were available.

Corrections facilities have been forced to deal with larger numbers of mentally ill inmates in part because of the decades-long move away from placing the mentally ill in psychiatric institutions.

“I teach a class for Los Angeles prison guards, and the first slide I show them reads: ‘Congratulations, you are the guard of the largest institution of mentally ill persons,’ ” said Bert Pepper, director of Info Exchange Inc., a nonprofit group that focuses on mental illness.