Hopeworks Community

Our jails we are told are the new psychiatric hospitals. They are packed with people they are not equipped to deal with and with whom they don’t do well. If anything they make things a lot worse and help leave an entire population of people stuck in an ever entrenched pattern of repeat incarceration. We seem to solve problems by diminishing the people who have them.

If you listen to Murphy it is simple:

1. People are in jail with “mental illness” are there because they have not had effective treatment for their “illness.”

2. Many of them do not even accept that they are “ill.” They refuse to accept the treatment they need.

3. We feed into the problem by allowing people who don’t have the capacity to make informed decisions control over the decisions that affect their lives.

4. The answer is to force them to accept treatment…