As a broad national survey, it complements similar but more locally focused volumes such as Elizabeth Ford's Sometimes Amazing Things Happen. The work concludes with specific ideas for reform. Finally, the author details reasons for the revolving door that tends to pull mentally ill offenders back into the system.

The following section evaluates how correctional facilities provide such care, concluding that failure is inevitable in a security-based, low-resource environment. Initial chapters discuss how and why the mentally ill are easily drawn into the criminal justice system, including a history of U.S. The book is organized around the process of criminalization. Roth mines an impressive array of interviews, case studies, official records, research, and statistics to support this view. PDF Download Insane: Americas Criminal Treatment of Mental. As a result, correctional facilities have become mental health providers by default, exhibiting many of the poor conditions and abusive aspects of mental asylums of the past. Insane is a galvanizing wake-up call for criminal justice reformers and anyone concerned about the plight of our most vulnerable. prisons, and mass incarceration has aggravated the problem. An eye-opening book that cries out for change.As reported here by veteran journalist Roth, mental illness affects more than half of the inmates in U.S. Though the subject matter dictates that much of the book is relentlessly depressing, the author is such a talented information gatherer and fluid stylist that the narrative becomes compulsive reading. 'Insane' is rife with sharp, brutal details that pull the reader beyond the realms of abstract policy debates.' And further, per a starred review in Kirkus Reviews: 'A searing exposé about the criminalization of mental illness. She convincingly diagnoses the glaring inadequacies of mental health treatment in prison but she is not out for scapegoats. Roth writes movingly of the human toll of incarceration. America’s mass-incarceration crisis is by now well known, but the overrepresentation of the mentally ill among the prison population is less studied.

As was noted of this book by The New York Times Book Review: 'Chilling. Alisa Roth (Author of Insane) Discover new books on Goodreads See if your friends have read any of Alisa Roths books Join Goodreads Alisa Roth’s Followers (17) Alisa Roth edit data Combine Editions Alisa Roth’s books Average rating: 4. On this edition of our show, we speak with journalist Alisa Roth, whose new book, 'Insane,' is a well-regarded and quite alarming exposé of the mental health crisis now facing our courts, jails, and prisons. It's taken a while for this particular truth to sink in, but America finally seems to be waking up to it: People with mental illness don't need to be locked up - they need to be treated.

Insane by Alisa Roth