Conor Cash

New prison: purported solution to a perceived problem

Homelessness, incarceration, and civil commitment are all interrelated and mutually reinforcing phenomena that have economic inequality at their base rather than mental illness

The Vermont Agency of Human Services has proposed a large psychiatric and prison facility for Franklin County. It has been proposed that this facility be built and maintained by CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, a scandal-plagued private prison contractor.

This secure facility would consist of some 925 beds for male and female prisoners and would serve youth, forensic, and geriatric patients. It purports to offer a solution to a perceived crisis in the mental-health system in which those reporting to emergency departments of hospitals are held for long periods of time while waiting for a bed at an appropriate facility.

This proposal illustrates an increasing trend that conflates a lack of access to psychiatric care with a threat to public safety and public health.

This thinking ignores that there is already significant overlap between the criminal-justice system and the mental-health system. The further intermingling of these systems could very well end badly both for people who are imprisoned and people who are receiving psychiatric treatment.

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