Mental health: Treatment can work better than jail

Re: “A worthy experiment: Care instead of jail” (editorial, 11-22).

The editorial did a great job of informing how we can prevent criminalization of mental illness. I agree that “Many of these people wouldn’t be in prison in the first place if they’d had decent care.”

Inmates with mental illnesses cost more to incarcerate than other inmates. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reported that prisoners who have behavioral health disorders cost the United States close to $9 billion a year.

Studies have shown that people with mental health disorders who go through mental health court are less likely to offend than before entering the program. Research has found that serious mental illness is higher among prisoners than it is in the general population, and more than 70 percent of prisoners with a serious mental illness also have a substance use disorder.

Providing mental health treatment outside correction facilities is socially just and cost effective, and it can improve racial disparities. We must continue mental health court and invest in community mental health treatment with jail diversion programs in order to provide effective treatment.

This story was originally published November 24, 2015 at 12:13 PM with the headline "Mental health: Treatment can work better than jail."