Cost to Society
Meanwhile the state shells out twice as much on these individuals than for other inmates. It costs the reformatory $70 per day to house an inmate while the national average of housing an inmate is $48. The medications and increased staff needed for treatment increases the reformatory’s costs.
“There is an obligation as citizens and as states to fulfill when it comes to dealing with these inmates but the cost rises when they are in prison,” Warden Chandler says. The Kentucky Department of Corrections spent approximately $1.5 million on psychotropic drugs in 2007 and more than 55 percent was spent at the Kentucky State Reformatory.
The danger of the prisons getting better at treating mental illness, says the warden, “is the fact that it is in prison and maybe that’s not the best bang for the buck for the society.”
He also says that the Kentucky legislature plans to reduce funds for health and welfare but isn’t going to for corrections. The warden has come to realize that he will see even more mentally ill inmates.
An improvement
This program is not perfect, Warden Chandler admits, “but we have more professionals and it is a drastic improvement to the 13 beds we started with.”
Kevin Pangburn agrees. While he says it is not perfect, he adds, “we have somewhat of a model for other states.”
Before CPTU was established, the Department of Corrections was slow to recognize mental illness. “We would mark it off as bad behavior,” says Larry Chandler. “We had to retrain ourselves and our staff to take different approaches.”
“The mantra for corrections is firm, fair and consistent but in a mental health environment, it needs to be firm, fair and creative. The guy you are talking to at 9 might not be the same guy you are talking to at noon, so you have to recognize what you are dealing with and how to approach it,” Chandler adds.
He now mandates hours of mental health training for everyone who works at the reformatory, including even those who work in the kitchen.
While the numbers of mentally ill inmates in Kentucky continues to rise the number of suicides have decreased since the since the program was started in 1998. That alone is significant Pangburn says.
Nowhere to go:
“While we are doing a better job than we were even five years ago, I am not sure this is the place for these men,” Warden Chandler says.
Many have suggested more mental health courts.
“The front end is we are getting more of them but the back door problem is we are going to release them and there is no place to release them to and that’s when it becomes extremely difficult,” says Warden Chandler. “We can tell society – he has just finished his debt to you. We are ready to release him. Oh, by the way, he is a sex offender, bipolar, schizophrenic, and now has Hepatitis C. That makes it very difficult for society to accept and extremely difficult for us to find him placement at the end of his sentence.”
Despite their attempts to meet the needs of these inmates, many including Kevin Pangburn believe these men are “trapped with nowhere else to go”.
“Unfortunately, prisons and jails in this country have become a dumping ground for the mentally ill,” says Pangburn. He doesn’t want to just replicate what happened in the 60s when they just warehoused the mentally ill and then sent them back on the streets. But often that is what happens.
“They are rejects of society and warehousing them in prison isn’t the way to go,” says Dr. Young. “Most of them don’t have life sentences and they will get out some day.”
Dr. Stephanie Roby, pyschologist in C wing, talks to an inmate. "My goal is to be a good example to these guys," she says. Monday through Friday Dr. Roby makes rounds throughout C wing talking to the inmates on lockdown. "I make decisions every day about whether someone really wants to kill themselves or someone else," she says of her job.
A man stands in the middle of his room for most of the day staring at the 4 walls surrounding him. Almost 555,000 people with mental illness are incarcerated while fewer than 55,000 are being treated in designated mental health hospitals.
