Prisoners with mental health illnesses should stay in prison, due to the shortage of mental care facilities.

Mental health treatment facilities are too expensive and the state should not need to move the mentally ill into these facilities.

72 percent of male prisoners and 70 percent of female prisoners have a mental illness, or more than one mental illness. 20 percent of prisoners have four or five major mental health illnesses. That is a huge chunk of people in prisons. In order to send this amount of people you would need a lot of money, money that the state does not have.

“It’s 65,000 dollars for a single bed, 40,000 for a shared room,” said receptionist at bridges recovery. She believes that if the former prisoner has enough money to pay that they wouldn’t turn them away.

Some people still believe that the prisoners need to get the help that they need, and the state should place the mentally ill inmates into treatment facilities.

In some cases, the inmates have had help beforehand. 30% of females with mental illnesses and 10% of male have been treated and rehabilitated but still go back to how they were before.

“Some people have to return for further treatment.” The receptionist went on to add.

The United States has one of the highest amounts of people in prisons; 2.2 million people are in prisons. This amount of people cannot all be put into a mental health treatment facility.

The prisoners should be rehabilitated after they have served time. Then the state does not have to pay for their rehabilitation. It is too costly, and would cause too much confusion.

If we do place the mentally ill inmates in the mental health treatment centers, they would need to go to a secure and safe facility. One where the mentally ill will not hurt other patients or the people who are trying to treat their illness. There are only a handful of places like this; therefor the options of these facilities are limited.

If people are pushing the mentally ill prisoners to get the help they need. If this is such a big issue the prisons should have their own mental illness treatment inside the prison. It would save money and give the mentally ill prisoners the treatment they need.

I believe the inmates should serve time, and then after their families and friends can help them into mental health facilities, it should not be the states job to place all the mentally ill inmates into mental health treatment facilities, especially since it is so expensive.