The Jail as a Dumping Ground: The Incidental Incarceration of Mentally Ill Individuals

The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has had the unintended consequence of increasing the number of persons with mental illnesses who are incarcerated in county jails. Many of these incarcerated mentally ill individuals are charged with relatively minor crimes that may be symptomatic of their mental illnesses. In this paper four objectives are accomplished: (1) we report the characteristics of a group of mentally ill persons (N = 132) picked up as the result of probate petitions over a 12-month period; (2) the arrest characteristics of a group of former and current inmates (N = 100) incarcerated in a large Kansas jail who were seen by mental health services during their incarceration over a six-month period are examined; (3) case studies of two mentally ill persons who were incarcerated in the jail are presented; and (4) the implications that mentally ill persons pose for jail operations are discussed.