From mental hospitals to jails: the pendulum swings

"Irresponsible deinstitutionalization"—release of mentally ill patients from psychiatric hospitals—is turning this country's 4,000 county and local jails into the new mental hospitals and returning care of the mentally ill to the deplorable conditions that prevailed more than 300 years ago, according to clinical psychologist Lawrence M. Cohen, MEd. Speaking at the Seventh National Conference on Medical Care and Health Services in Correctional Institutions sponsored in Chicago by the American Medical Association and American Health Care Consultants, Cohen, who is director of the Psychological Social Services Unit at Burlington County Jail, Mount Holly, NJ, said, "We are still in the Stone Age as regards treating the mentally ill in jails." Statistics show that patients dismissed from mental hospitals have begun to merge with the populations of local lockups. Writing in the 1983 edition ofCrime and Justice, an annual review of research in the field, John Monahan, PhD, a professor of