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Mental Ill in Prison

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Mental Ill in Prison
There is a large sum of groups that populate prisons, from offenders with AIDS to youthful offenders usually under the age of 25. The population of offenders that I will be discussing is the group of the mentally ill in prisons. Mentally ill offenders are individuals with mental disorders, according to NAMI.org (National Alliance on Mental Illness), a mental illness is “...a medical condition that disrupts a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.” such a condition is capable of making a person commit a crime with little to no remorse at the time of the crime. Some mental disorders can also make a person commit a crime without them knowing so. People with dementia disorders such as Alzheimer disease, that breaks down a person’s way of thinking and behavior as well as memory dysfunctions, can make them believe that by doing something bad, such as committing a murder crime of an intruder on their home would be the right thing to so in self-defense and protecting their family. However that intruder may not actually be an intruder at all, it could be their own family member that the mental disorder completely wiped out temporarily from the persons memory. Not all crimes are as follows though, someone could be simply having a break down and temporarily lose their sanity and wreak havoc in a manner that disrupts the law. How this population adjusts to incarceration isn't quite simple. Often these groups of prisoners get badly taken care of due to poor health care in prisons. Other prisoners when given an opportunity victimize and torment these populations of mentally ill inmates. Prisons are never a safe place for anyone, prisoners confined and limited to their actions build up aggression and anger, and when that anger gets to a

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