More than 10 percent of New York's 65,000 plus prison inmates are individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses or psychological disabilities. There are also currently as many as 300,000 mentally ill prison inmates incarcerated throughout the United States, about three times more than the number of patients currently hospitalized in psychiatric facilities across the country. These numbers are alarming to those of us who practice in the mental health field, and the numbers will continue to grow if we don't begin to address the problem of needlessly incarcerating people with mental illness for minor crimes or crimes which are not violent in nature.

For many of the mentally ill, our prisons have become their new long-term hospitals. But with many prisons operating short staffed and extremely limited in their abilities to provide coordinated psychiatric treatment, they have become needless warehouses that often utilize isolation and separation tactics in order to control (instead of rehabilitate) the mentally ill inmate.

Many of the mentally ill in our prison systems are there because of crimes they have committed in the community. No one is condoning breaking the law or committing crimes. However, some of the crimes committed are not violent or serious in nature. Some of the mentally ill have been incarcerated for unarmed minor burglaries, family disturbances, public nuisance, homelessness and other nonviolent acts. No one is questioning incarceration in cases of violence or chronic violation of the law, but we need to consider providing alternatives to incarceration for the mentally ill within our communities. Nearly 28,000 inmates are released from New York prisons each year and approximately 11 percent of them are individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses. Without adequate care and

comprehensive discharge planning to help them maintain themselves in treatment and on medication, many will become part of the revolving door that continues to plague our penal systems.

Prison personnel often perceive the mentally ill inmate as being disruptive, unpredictable and potentially dangerous. This population is frequently stigmatized, victimized (when they possibly have not victimized anyone), and are often left to languish in their cells. Because of a lack of adequate psychiatric resources, these inmates are also left in the general population without any treatment, except to be medicated or to receive a brief consultation in preparation for their discharge to the community.

As a society we must do everything we can to protect the safety and well-being of our citizens from dangerous individuals or predators. However, the majority of the inmates in prison who are mentally ill have not been proven to be dangerous. For these individuals there must be alternatives to incarceration. We need to develop specialized residential treatment facilities for the forensic population. We should expand case management services and supported housing resources that have trained staff able to provide the appropriate rehabilitative and recovery services. And, we need to develop a more cohesive partnership between mental health and the judicial system to establish mental health court programs in our communities that would provide professional evaluation and assessment for people with mental illnesses. These programs, which have proved successful in other parts of the country, serve as a viable alternative to incarceration for people with psychiatric disabilities. No one deserves to be incarcerated for mental illness alone.