A new white paper released today by the Ruderman Family Foundation has revealed the daunting extent in which children with mental illnesses have their civil rights systematically violated, resulting in over half of all inmates in the U.S. having a mental illness.
The white paper argues that this widespread discrimination starts early, even from kindergarten in most cases, often cumulating in non-completion of high school, problems with the law, and results in homelessness and/or incarceration in adulthood.
Unlike people with visible or apparent disabilities, people with non-apparent disabilities often don’t receive accommodations guaranteed to them under the Americans with Disabilities Act due to their invisible nature. Instead of getting reasonable accommodations and access to services, this population gets criminalized, often referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline which affects people with disabilities at a much higher rate.
The white paper reveals the following supporting statistics:
- More than half of all inmates in the U.S. have a mental illness
- People with disabilities, including non-apparent ones, are over-represented in every single traditionally marginalized group (women, Black people, Hispanic people, members of LGBTQ community, etc.), most of which are also incarcerated at a higher rate
- Depending on the state, 30-80% of foster care children have a non-apparent disability, and they are much more likely to end up incarcerated
- The long-term consequences of incarceration are devastating given the high recidivism rate (almost 50%) and the lack of supports in place to re-integrate people, especially people with non-apparent disabilities, back into the community
- This system of discrimination also hurts the wider community and taxpayers given that it costs more than $140,000 a year to incarcerate a young person, and only about $10,000 to educate them
I had a chance to do an interview to learn more.
Why do people with mental illness end up incarcerated at higher rates?
The answer to this are multi-faceted, but the argument we are making is this: our culture doesn’t understand non-apparent disabilities, like mental illness. Although legally people with mental illness have a right to accommodation and treatment, we tend to not recognize disabilities we cannot readily see. So if someone with a mental illness behaves anti-socially and violently as a symptom of their illness, our collective prejudice is to punish that person rather than help them. Much of this also stems from the misunderstanding that mental illness is somehow not real and that if a person just tried harder to behave differently, things would be better. People with mental illness have their disability dismissed in ways that we would never dismiss readily visible disabilities—for example, if someone has a broken leg, we would not tell them that they don’t need crutches or a cast and to just think positively and they’ll be fine. This lack of support accumulates and pervades all areas of life—from school, to work, to personal relationships. So too often when you combine social exclusion, lack of support, lack of access to treatment, you end up with a population that has a higher likelihood of becoming involved with the criminal justice system.
While some police departments across the country are becoming much better at referring people for evaluation and treatment for mental illness, many others still just imprison people with mental illness.
What is the link between foster care and incarceration rates?
Children in foster care have a higher likelihood if becoming imprisoned as adults. The link is the same as explained above—a lack of support and accommodation. Here it’s important to understand that children don’t enter the foster care system unless there is some trauma—active abuse, neglect, murder of one parent by the other etc.—and it is declared that they can no longer stay with their primary caregivers and families. That alone would be a significant reason for extensive support and treatment to ensure that children are developing well and being offered tools to cope with the trauma. However, most foster care kids unfortunately don’t receive this kind of extra care.
On top of that we document that trauma often results in the development of mental illness as well as learning disabilities. From here we enter the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately impacts children with non-apparent disabilities (such as mental illness and learning/cognitive disabilities).
How does this affect the general population?
I’m not sure how to interpret this question, but on one level this impacts the general population because every single one of us knows someone with a non-apparent disability. About one in two people will develop a mental illness in their lifetime so this is not some isolated phenomenon, but is at the center of our existence as a social species. Criminalizing rather than understanding and treating non-apparent disabilities is not in anyone’s interest.
Furthermore, the cost of housing prisoners, especially juvenile detainees is up to 10 times higher than the cost to educate them. The overall attitude toward non-apparent/”invisible” disabilities does not make sense from the perspective of civil rights, but it also doesn’t make sense from a fiscal perspective. As tax payers we need to be aware of how our money is spent and advocate for more sensible solutions.
What are some ways people can get involved to help advocate for solutions?
In the final section of the White Paper we list several ways to get involved for different audiences. When it comes to parents though, I strongly suggest 1) speak with your children about disabilities as a part of human life and the fact that several of their classmates might have disabilities and that that’s okay. 2) if you suspect your child has a non-apparent disability, demand that the school tests them. Under the 2004 IDEA legislation, they have to test children suspected of having disabilities. 3) Inquire about disciplinary policies at your school. A majority of suspensions from school were due to non-violent, non-drug related offenses. Demand that zero tolerance policies be scrapped and that student-focused, research-based disciplinary policies be implemented. 4) Speak with your fellow parents. Educate them about the rights of your children. Work with the school to stop the school-to-prison pipeline.
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