The following article is part 1 of a series on mental health in Connecticut’s criminal justice system.
For years, mental health data from Connecticut prisons was collected but not analyzed until 2023. report A study by the Connecticut Sentencing Commission found that 95.5% of the state’s incarcerated population had a current or past history of a mental disorder, substance abuse disorder, or both.
Alex Tsarkov, executive director of the Sentencing Commission, said: “To say it’s ‘expensive’ is an understatement. Almost everyone is in jail.”
According to the data, the DOC classified 32% of inmates as needing treatment for a range of diagnoses, from post-traumatic stress and mood disorders to antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia. Additionally, 74% of the DOC’s approximately 10,000 inmates had moderate to very severe substance abuse problems requiring treatment. More than 24% suffered from both psychological and substance abuse conditions simultaneously and required care.
Tsarkov explained that the 2023 report only provides a snapshot of the Connecticut prison system as of one day in January 2022. It identifies “what” the problem is, but not necessarily “why” or “how” to fix it.
The Sentencing Commission’s report follows a wave of national research seeking to better understand mental health within the context of the criminal justice system. Drawing on the national literature, Sentencing Commission researchers explained that detention centers in the United States have “become de facto mental health facilities” and that “inmates with severe mental illness are now in state We outnumber psychiatric hospitals by a factor of 10.”
Tsarkov said the issue is not new.
“When I talk to prosecutors, public defenders and judges, they see this in court. I was.
“These issues have not been resolved. Clearly there are many people in our system who need mental health. about it.”
The study not only sheds light on the needs facing Connecticut’s incarcerated people, but also raises more questions, Tsarkov said.
“We’ve only scratched the surface here,” he said.
neither an institution nor a service
During her 21-year career as a corrections officer and Lieutenant at the DOC, State Senator Kathy Austen worked with mentally ill inmates in the 1990s after the deinstitutionalization movement closed Fairfield Hills and Norwich State Hospital. For the first time, he said he saw an increase in
The idea was to replace psychiatric facilities with accessible, comprehensive mental health services within the community, but that never materialized, according to Osten.
“When we moved mental patients out of institutions, we didn’t pass the dollars we were paying to those mental institutions to services. We didn’t spend it actually implementing the services and programs we needed to keep us healthy,” Osten said.
As a result, when individuals with chronic mental illness entered the criminal justice system, judges imprisoned them, Osten said.
“This is the forgotten population,” said Osten. “What we did when we deinstitutionalized people was put them on an inmate number and put them back in the Department of Corrections so they could get a job, secure a place to live, or participate in a program. It became very difficult to do.”
Osten asked sentencing committee to study mental illness in Connecticut inmates 2019She said the 2023 report showed colleagues that a real mental health crisis exists in Connecticut prisons.
“If we don’t take this seriously, we are abandoning one of our true responsibilities in government: caring for those who need it most,” Osten said. “These people need someone to pay attention to what’s going on and change the practices and policies that imprison people with chronic mental illness.”
for Dr. Reena KapoorThe principal investigator of the study, the most surprising aspect of the report was that rates of mental health and substance abuse disorders in prisons in Connecticut were in line with data from other states. Diversion program.
“We, as a state, have spent a lot of time and energy between DHMAS (Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services) and CSSD (Department of Court Support Services) and the Justice Department to create programs to help this population. Does that mean it’s working or isn’t it?” Kapoor said. “Broadly, this indicates that there is more work to be done or more questions to be answered.”
discrepancies and inaccuracies
A 2023 report found that 81% of incarcerated women needed treatment for mental health disorders, compared with just 28% of men. Proportions across racial and ethnic groups continued to vary, with 53% of Native Americans, 41% of Whites, 35% of Asians, 30% of Hispanics, and 26% of Blacks diagnosed with an active mental disorder. (The report notes that Native Americans and Asians make up smaller percentages.) Age is also a factor, with inmates under the age of 26 having the highest rate of active mental disorders at 37.6% of her I am experiencing
While the findings are consistent with reports from other states, Kapoor cautioned that rates of mental health problems in certain groups may be higher than those shown in the paper.
“We have to take into account the context in which these diagnoses are being made,” Kapoor said.
For example, Kapoor explained that women are already experiencing higher rates of anxiety and depression than in the general population. She said access to stronger mental health services could lead to more frequent diagnoses for women. may not be very open to disclosing
The same may apply to racial disparities, where cultural differences in willingness to discuss mental health and unconscious or implicit biases among health care providers lead to higher diagnosis rates among white populations than minorities. There is a possibility.
A separate key has been revealed.
Kapoor said this could be the result of a pre-sentence diversion program that mandates treatment instead of imprisonment. of people may have higher incarceration rates. Kapoor said these individuals could be trapped in “ridiculous accusations” that would ultimately settle without judgment.
According to Kapoor, one clear factor is that mental illness is not the cause of crime.
Look for causality
but associate professor Maria Cerni-Buzeo, Director of Ph.D., University of New Haven. The criminal justice program said the lines weren’t so clear.
“Many of the mental health disorders these people suffer from include things like high impulsivity[and]the inability to control emotions and emotionally-driven behavior,” said Tcherni-Buzzeo. “Of course, these mental health conditions are associated with a higher likelihood of impulsive behavior such as shoplifting, assault, and hitting people.”
Poverty and the trauma that comes with it are key. Tcherni-Buzzeo said exposure to violence in poor communities and lack of quality mental health services can snowball from childhood into adulthood.
“It almost creates a vicious cycle,” Cerni Buzeo said. “This will not only exacerbate existing mental health problems that may exist with these children, but it will also create new mental health problems and this vulnerability that literally affects people on a physiological level. It creates anxiety.”
“Your stress hormones are essentially raging on a regular basis, and the feeling of this unsafe environment only perpetuates the problem,” added Tcherni-Buzzeo. It influences the way they make decisions, often decisions that seem completely irrational to others living in such environments can be rational decisions. there is potential.”
Lamont Swint found himself stuck in that cycle on the way to 10 years in prison at age 16. Swint said he was released in 2015 and to this day sees the kids in his neighborhood follow the same path.
“Most of us don’t even realize that our own environment suffocates us every day,” Swint said. and must see, people can run up to someone and blow their heads off, walk down the street and get praise, and no one pays attention to it, as if it unpacks itself need to do it.
Swint described the constant glorification of violence, the undiagnosed anxiety and depression drenched in drugs and alcohol, and the ever-present fear that leads teenagers to carry guns for protection.
If you tell them, “When someone hits you, you shouldn’t hit him back,” they’ll look at you like crazy. So now they’re in front of a judge and they’re saying you’re a bad person. Is not it?
Swint said he often thinks things would have been different had he had access to community resources as a child.
“Not many people tell people they might need therapy because of the trauma they witness in their neighborhood every day. Don’t bottle it up.It’s said to be tough.We’re told not to even act as if you’re dealing with something that shows weakness.So you keep everything inside And … the bomb goes off from there,” Swint said.
COMPASS Youth Collaborative engages community activists with drivers and victims of violence to break the cycle of crime among Hartford’s youth.
The nonprofit’s CEO, Jacquelyn Santiago Nazario, explained that there is no risk for young people aged 16 to 20 to participate in the COMPASS Youth program. They are already “endangered”. Of these young people, 89% of him have lost a close family member or friend to murder.
“Violence is a public health problem, and it spreads like a disease,” said Santiago Nazario. I believe that incarceration without rehabilitation only exacerbates the problem later on because there is no intervention. I think I found it.”
The COMPASS program uses cognitive-behavioral therapy, but Santiago Nazario says four years of intervention may be required to disrupt lifelong responses learned from trauma.
“We tend to see people who commit crimes as just criminals. And yes, I agree that we need consequences for bad behavior. Given the same situation, any of us could have been in that situation, and I believe that people need rehabilitation and humanization, ”said Santiago Nazario. “So I think it’s really important to recognize that there are many factors that can contribute. …People shouldn’t be judged by their worst mistakes for the rest of their lives.”
