When Mental Health is Put Behind Bars

By Chelsey Jaipersaud | Published by November 16, 2021

A thin and disheveled man named Henry, paranoid from a mental illness, was arrested and imprisoned for two years after refusing to leave the premises of a convenience store.

It was an outburst that could have been avoided had he received proper treatment for his mental illness. 

On October 7, President Lamont Repollet and Dr.  Jonathan Mercantini, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Kean,  joined a panel of public defenders, prosecutors, psychologists, and others in criminal justice to discuss the relationship between the criminal justice system and individuals living with mental illness.

The ultimate goal of this partnership between Kean and the Lesniak Institute for American Leadership, a non-profit founded by former state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, is to establish a criminal justice system that includes courts designed to treat offenders who suffer from mental health issues.

“We want action, it is something I believe in firmly, as a pillar of my administration at Kean University: Equity in Action,” Dr. Repollet said.

The forum discussed the importance of the decriminalization of mental illness in prisons, especially for those who were put in jail for nonviolent and misdemeanor crimes.

Those individuals are enduring severe mental health issues for a crime that can not be weighed at the same amount. 

“Yes there is a connection, one that is not often reported on the news, seen on popular television shows, or even spoken of in public, there is much more to the story,” Repollet said.

The panel was inspired by psychiatrist Christine Montross who spent years treating severely ill psychiatric patients and wrote a book titled Waiting For An Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration. The book gives readers a glimpse into incarceration through stories of those behind bars.

“The patients that I see are really in moments of crisis,” Montross said.

Montross explained that the patients she would see came in contact with the legal system, not out of criminal intent, but rather “untreated symptomatology”  that is seen.

For example, in-person shouting inside a Starbucks or charging through TSA checkpoints because they have a delusional belief.

Their actions aren’t seen as normal nor safe in society, and therefore the police are called. When the police come in contact with mentally ill people they do not take them to facilities that will help the overall mental state of that patient.

“Officers would sometimes conduct what they call compassionate arrests,” Montross said, “They would see someone who is clearly mentally ill and distressed and they would say at least if he or she is in jail I know that they get 3 hots and a cot, I know that someone is giving them medication”.

Montross challenged this by saying that the police would never arrest someone to get them their chemotherapy or insulin for diabetes.

This is something that is only done with people who are mentally ill.

Those individuals with a mental illness wait to be evaluated and receive proper attention, sometimes the wait surpasses three months and by that time their mental state might have worsened.

“People are afraid of people with mental illness and so the tension is that public safety concern, that the only way we can protect the community from someone who is seriously mentally ill and committing violent crimes is to lock them up,” New Jersey State Public Defender Joseph Krakora said.

It was agreed that this is a serious issue and in order to resolve what is currently happening within the criminal justice system, everyone needs to come together.

Nothing will change unless these individuals care enough to accomplish meaningful reform by working together.

The people who sat at the table that night are people who hold knowledge about the system and can help in finding a balance between keeping individuals safe and ensuring that those incarcerated and suffering from a mental illness get the help they deserve, the group agreed.

“This is the beginning of a journey and with everyone’s help we are going to have a big success at the end of the journey,” Lesniak said.

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