Issue: Individuals with psychiatric disabilities have become more and more involved with the criminal justice system. This is, in part, due to the failure to properly fund community-based mental health services that provide individuals living with psychiatric disabilities the services they need to remain healthy and stable. We continue to see individuals with mental illnesses entering court rooms, sometimes as a result of behavior caused by their untreated or under-treated disability. And when individuals with psychiatric disabilities do end up in prison or jail, many are inappropriately placed into solitary confinement/special housing units (SHU), often times as a result of behavior directly caused by their untreated or under-treated mental illness. Placement in SHU is not therapeutic and often times results in fostering or furthering mental deterioration.

Action: NYS must make take steps to avoid incarcerating people with psychiatric disabilities through innovative alternatives to incarceration, including development of additional mental health courts. With regard to the treatment of prisoners, NYS must ban the use solitary confinement for inmates with mental health needs.