NCJ Number
80528
Journal
Journal of Social Issues Volume: 37 Issue: 3 Dated: (1981) Pages: 6-20
Date Published
1981
Length
15 pages
Annotation
The impact of deinstitutionalization on prisoners' and patients' rights is examined.
Abstract
Proponents of deinstitutionalization have argued that as a result of this policy, deviants of all sorts are to be spared the hardship, abuses, and indignities of institutional existence and are instead to be treated more effectively and humanely in community-based programs. While the movement to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill has on the whole been effective in securing the ex-patient's and the potential patient's right to be free from the coercion of involuntary hospitalization, it has failed to develop an alternative system to care for the needs of the mentally ill in the community. The massive release of patients from psychiatric facilities occurred without any prior systematic research on the likely impact of such a policy, and it persists without adequate substantiation of the effectiveness of community care. The goal of the deincarceration of all but the most dangerous offenders to be achieved by the development of community-based programs for offenders has not been accomplished. Prison populations have continued to increase even as the number of offenders in community-based programs has risen. This suggests that rather than diverting offenders to community programs who would otherwise have been imprisoned, offenders who would simply have been warned and released or granted a suspended sentence with minimal or no supervision are now being drawn into formal programs that constitute an expansion of the social control net. Seventy-nine references are listed.