“When I became a judge I had no idea that I was becoming a gatekeeper to the largest psychiatric facility in the state of Florida – the Miami-Dade Jail.”–Steve Leifman, Miami-Dade County judge

Not only does the United States have the most people in prison, in the whole world, but it also has the most people with mental problems in prison.

A National Public Radio report says that the University of South Florida looked at who was the most frequently jailed people in the Miami-Dade County prison system.  It turns out that people with mental problems are the most frequently jailed people: “Over a five-year period, these 97 individuals were arrested almost 2,200 times and spent 27,000 days in the Miami-Dade Jail. It cost the taxpayers $13 million.”-Steve Leifman, Miami-Dade County judge

Most states don’t use mental health facilities, no thanks to former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to cut funding in the 1980s, so most people who commit crimes because of their mental problems end up abused in prisons.

“It seems to me that we have criminalized being mentally ill.”-Greg Hamilton, Travis County Sheriff, Texas

Sheriff Hamilton says because there is little funding for hospitals to care for mental patients, the prison system becomes the default ‘treatment’ center.

The amount of time a person with mental problems stays in a Travis county jail is between 50 and 258 days.

According to a 2009 Corrections Today interview with Judge Leifman, 90% of U.S. hospital beds for mental health patients have been closed, and there’s been a 400% increase in the mentally ill offenders entering prison!

According to a May 2011 Daily Kos posting: “There are three times as many men and women with mental illness in U.S. prisons as in mental health hospitals.”

“The costs of keeping a mentally ill individual in a penitentiary are three to six time what it costs to treat them at an outpatient mental health center.”

“The U.S. prison system had become the largest mental health provider in the country – with nearly 50% of inmates reporting mental health problems.”

“According to the most recent survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 81% of mentally ill inmates currently in state prison, 76% of mentally ill inmates in federal prison, and 79% of mentally ill inmates in local jails have prior convictions.”

“Mentally ill prisoners are more likely than others to end up housed in especially harsh conditions, such as isolation, that can push them over the edge into acute psychosis.”

“…there are powerful economic drivers to keep locking more and more of them up. In fact incarceration and detention has turned into a multibillion dollar growth industry.”

“…the [privately run Corporate] prison industrial complex is primarily motivated by economics, such that a formidable amount of prison industry capital is devoted to creating prisoners…”

In other words the exploding growth of Corporate run prisons demands more prisoners, so that the Corporate run prisons can make the money to pay back investors.  Mentally ill people are easy targets.