In a column for the New York Times (2/9, Subscription Publication), Nicholas Kristof notes that as humane, cost-effective ways of treating mental illnesses have been cut back, the US is increasingly resorting to detaining individuals with mental illnesses in jails and prisons. Kristof notes that while people are not “officially incarcerated” for psychiatric ailments, many “are brought in for offenses that flow from mental illness,” and argues that the US, as a society has “in effect, returned to the 1800s.”
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— “Inside a Mental Hospital Called Jail, ” Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, February 8, 2014.