Political Quotes

“I rise in support of H.R. 3992, the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act of 2007. Since the 1960s, State mental health hospitals have increasingly reduced their populations of mentally ill individuals in response to a nationwide call for deinstitutionalization. The move toward deinstitutionalization was based on the fact that mentally ill individuals are constitutionally entitled to refuse treatment, or at least to have it provided in the least restrictive environment. Unfortunately, neither the local governments for the States nor the Federal Government have invested the necessary resources to meet the needs for community-based mental health treatment and services created and needed by deinstitutionalization. A 2006 report by the United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics entitled 'Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates' suggests that the criminal justice system has become, by default, the primary caregiver of the most seriously mentally ill individuals. The bureau reports that over one-half of the prison and jail population of this country is mentally ill.”