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Article: Cost shifting to jails after a change to managed mental health care.(Mental Health)
- Article from:
- Health Services Research
- Article date:
- October 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Health Research and Educational Trust. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The fates of mentally ill persons have always been intertwined with the shifting boundaries between the criminal justice and mental health systems. Just as public mental hospitals once served as the institutions of last resort for the care and confinement of mentally ill persons, jails have become the last secure environment in most communities for the control of mentally ill persons when they are unmanageable and noncompliant. The U.S. Justice Department has reported that nearly 284,000 people with mental illnesses were in jail or prison on any given day--about 16 percent of the incarcerated population and more than four times the resident census in state mental hospitals ...