USA Today (7/24, Johnson) reports that data supplied by the Federal Bureau of Prisons show that the system “has spent more than $36.5 million on psychotropic drugs to treat thousands of offenders in the past four years.” Data supplied to USA Today demonstrate that nearly 10 percent of the 216,000 Federal inmates “are receiving medications designed to treat an array of illnesses, from depression and bipolar disorder to acute schizophrenia.” The disclosure “comes as government officials have raised questions about the costs of confining such large populations, while advocates for the mentally ill argue that prisons and jails have become the new repository for people with mental illness.”
Related Links:
— “Thousands of prisoners treated for mental illness,” Kevin Johnson, USA Today, July 24, 2014.