TOPIC: Mental Health Problems in Prisons
SUBJECT: Criminology
TYPE: Research Paper
DESCRIPTION:
Assignment 4, Part 1: Research Project Draft Submission Due Week 8 and worth 200 points In Week 2, you submitted your Topic Selection and Proposal. Throughout the length of the course, you have read about your topic, increased your knowledge about your topic, and gathered credible information while conducting research on your topic. Now, you get to consolidate all of your research and assignments into one deliverable final Research Project. The Basics of APA Style Tutorial is helpful in writing your paper. Write a four to six (4-6) page paper in which you: Give a brief explanation of your chosen topical area. Based on your chosen topic, define the problems and challenges that exist in crime and criminology. Explain the historical issues that have contributed to the problems and challenges. Address the internal and external stakeholders and how they contribute to both the problems and the solutions in crime and criminology. Discuss the data and information that you have collected while conducting research on your topic. Discuss how the data relates to the problems and challenges in crime and criminology.
Develop a solution that addresses the problems and challenges in crime and criminology, based on your research. Use at least eight (6) scholarly sources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia, Ask.com, Answers.com and general websites do not qualify as scholarly. Here’s what I have so far: Mental health problems have long been an issue of concern for the United States. Without special and dedicated care, persons struggling with mental health conditions cannot receive the care that they need to function normally within society. Regardless of this need for specialized professional care, the American justice system has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Americans with mental health problems and behavioral issues. This course of action complicates the process of caring for such persons and is likely to aggravate their conditions or inhibit their recovery.
According to Torrey et al. (2014), this problem begun to emerge in the 1970s, when the authorities changed their approach towards dealing with mentally ill persons. Before then, the government had held such persons in hospitals, where they received at least some of the treatment that they required. However, since 1970, the authorities have reverted to holding such persons in prisons and jails, an approach that had been in place more than a century before between 1770 and 1820 (Torrey et al. 2014). As a result, several hundred thousand inmates in America’s suffer from serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Additionally, James and Glaze (2006) report that more than half of the inmates in state prisons and forty-five percent of those in federal institutions suffer from any mental condition. These figures indicate that the problem of mental illnesses in America’s prisons is a significant issue that the authorities. As such, this study will be dealing with an important issue that requires the country’s attention.