Criminal
Mar. 8, 2007
Unbalanced System
The jails are unsuited to be large-scale mental health providers, but that's what they are, writes a public defender.
Konrad Moore
Public Defender, Kern County Public Defender's Office
Mental illness is the forgotten stepchild of the criminal-justice system. Nearly 20 percent of California's 173,000 state-prison inmates are being treated for mental illness, and government officials recently proposed building mental-health-care units in seven prisons to treat mentally disordered inmates.
The plan begs two basic questions: First, does it make sense for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to be one of the state's largest providers of mental-health ser...
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