MEDIA ADVISORY
May 28, 2014

CONTACT: Samantha Friedman, West End Strategy Team
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TODAY: Representative of national interfaith human rights organization to participate in panel on mental illness in U.S. jails

WASHINGTON – A Congressional panel on the Hill today, “Mental Illness in America’s Jails and Prisons,” will bring members of Congress, human rights advocates and corrections experts into a conversation as part of Mental Health Awareness Month, commemorated in May. The goal is to bring attention to the challenges faced by incarcerating individuals suffering from mental health issues and to encourage positive change in the system.

Co-hosts Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Ohio-D), Rep. Bobby Scott (Virginia-D), and Rep. Cedric Richmond (Louisiana-D) are all expected to participate.

“The United States incarcerates more of its people than any other nation globally, disproportionately communities of color, the poor, and individuals with mental illness, and confines more incarcerated people to solitary confinement than any other democratic nation,” said Laura Markle Downton, Director of U.S. Prisons Policy and Program at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, who will participate in today’s panel. “We must end the insidious use of torture in our policy, practice and culture.

“The National Religious Campaign Against Torture believes that the United States must do everything it can to end our nation’s reliance on the psychological torture of solitary confinement, a practice that both exacerbates and creates mental illness, and focus scarce resources on rehabilitative alternatives and mental health treatment to increase community safety and bring an end to torture.”

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture has been vocal in its opposition to solitary confinement on moral grounds. In February, the organization submitted written testimony to Congress in advance of a Congressional hearing on solitary confinement at the federal level, “Reassessing Solitary Confinement II: The Human Rights, Fiscal and Public Safety Consequences.”

Media is welcome and encouraged to cover. Details follow.

WHAT: Mental Illness in America’s Jails and Prisons

WHEN: Wednesday, May 28, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

WHERE: 2226 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

WHO:
Panelists

• Laura Markle Downton, Director of U.S. Prisons Policy & Program, National Religious Campaign Against Torture
• Amy Fettig, Senior Staff Counsel for the National Prison Project, American Civil Liberties Union
• Ron Honberg, National Director of Policy & Legal Affairs, National Alliance on Mental Illness
• Jennifer Mathis, Deputy Director, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law

Congressional co-hosts

• Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Ohio-D)
• Rep. Bobby Scott (Virginia-D)
• Rep. Cedric Richmond (Louisiana-D)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Until the early 19th century, mentally ill individuals were routinely confined to prisons and jails, when the practice was deemed inhumane and problematic. Challenges to the practice led to their hospitalization instead. But when the conditions of many of those psychiatric hospitals were found to be abysmal, many were closed by the 1970s. Such a history has left the mentally ill in America facing new challenges today as more humane and cost-effective ways of treating mental illness have been reduced, and as the system increasingly resorts to the law-enforcement toolbox: jails and prisons.

Currently, there are 10 times more mentally ill Americans in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals. More than half of prisoners, roughly 400,000 inmates, in the United States have a mental health problem, according to a 2006 Justice Department study. Among women inmates, almost three-quarters suffer from mental illness. Estimates show that prisoners with mental illness cost the U.S. an average of nearly $9 billion every year, roughly $300 to $400 a day per individual. Data shows that 25-40 percent of all Americans with mental illness pass through the criminal justice system at some point.

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is a membership organization committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Since its formation in January 2006, more than 300 religious organizations have joined NRCAT, including representatives from the Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Baha’i, Buddhist, and Sikh communities. Members include national denominations and faith groups, regional organizations and local congregations.
www.nrcat.org   @NRCATtweets   facebook.com/nrcat

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