Criminalizing the
Mentally Ill?
by Christopher Dodson,
Executive Director, North Dakota Catholic Conference
January 2002
At a recent legislative interim committee
meeting, Tim Schuetzle, the warden of North Dakota’s
prisons, stated that the state was in danger of being sued
for its poor treatment of mentally ill inmates. According
to Schuetzle, one-third of the all the state’s prison
inmates have a mental illness that requires psychiatric
care. He also noted that during a recent four month period,
78 percent of all disciplinary incidents were caused by
prisoners with mental illnesses.
The picture does not look much better at the state’s
Youth Correctional Center. Legislators were told that 55 to
65 percent of the center’s students are on
medications for psychiatric problems.
To help solve the situation at the prison, corrections
officials intend to ask the legislature for a special unit
at the Jamestown prison to deal with mentally ill inmates.
The legislature rejected such a request at the last
legislative session. The proposal is likely to get another
look.
While the question of what to do with mentally ill inmates
needs attention, we should also take a look at the bigger
picture and ask how this problem developed. Some years ago,
states began
“de-institutionalizing” persons with mental
illness. The idea was to move persons with mental illness
back into the community rather than placing non-dangerous
persons in mental hospitals. The idea, if done right, can
work and better respects the dignity of persons with a
mental illness.
Too many states, however, did not commit the necessary
services at the community level to treat persons that would
have otherwise been institutionalized. Without treatment,
many mentally ill persons ended up homeless, on drugs, or
engaged in criminal activity. Some observers have called
the entire process the “criminalization” of
mental illness. Many states have noticed significant
increases in jail and prison inmates with mental illness.
Has the same thing happened in North Dakota? It is not
clear what percentage of inmates had a mental illness ten
years ago. This is, however, the first time we are hearing
about a problem existing.
It is well established that most of North Dakota’s
inmates are in prison because of activities related to drug
use. Here again, the relationship to mental illness should
not be missed. A federal study has noted that 57 percent of
those with a mental disorder have at least one addictive
disorder. Looking from another perspective, between 41 and
65 percent of those with a non-alcohol addictive disorder
also have at least one mental disorder. Thirty-seven
percent of alcoholics have a second mental disorder.
It seems apparent that if we really want to do something
about prison inmates with mental illness, we need to work
at addressing the causes of their criminal behavior and
focus more attention on treatment for addiction and mental
illness.
Champions of such an approach include both Pope John Paul
II and the U.S. Catholic bishops. As Catholics we believe
that all persons, including those with a mental illness and
those with addictions, are created in the image of God and
have a right to treatment. If we, as a society, recognized
that basic human right, we might not have to face some of
the difficult and expensive problems we are now facing.
