Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness

An urgent exposﾃ(c)f the mental health crisis in our courts, jails, and prisons

America has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. As many as half of all people in America’s jails and prisons have a psychiatric disorder. One in four fatal police shootings involves a person with such disorders.

In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to show how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker.

Through intimate stories of people in the system and those trying to fix it, Roth reveals the hidden forces behind this crisis and suggests how a fairer and more humane approach might look. Insane is a galvanizing wake-up call for criminal justice reformers and anyone concerned about the plight of our most vulnerable.

Author: Alisa Roth
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 06/09/2020
Pages: 336
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.51w x 0.84d
ISBN: 9781541646476
Language: English