> Mentally ill young often jailed
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> 15,000 improperly incarcerated in 2003
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> The New York Times
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> WASHINGTON - About 15,000 children with psychiatric disorders were
> improperly incarcerated last year because no mental health services
> were available in their communities, congressional investigators say.
> The Democratic staff of the House Committee on Government Reform
> compiled the figures in the first such nationwide survey of juvenile
> detention centers.
> "The use of juvenile detention facilities to warehouse children with
> mental disorders is a serious national problem," said Sen. Susan
> Collins, a Maine Republican, who sought the survey with Rep. Henry
> Waxman, a California Democrat.
> The study, presented Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate Committee on
> Governmental Affairs, found that children as young as age 7 were
> incarcerated because of a lack of access to mental health care.
> More than 340 detention centers, two-thirds of those that responded to
> the survey, said that youths with mental disorders were being locked
> up because there was no place else for them to go while awaiting
> treatment.
> Seventy-one centers in 33 states said they were holding mentally ill
> children for whom no charges had been filed.
> The 15,000 youths awaiting mental health services accounted for 8
> percent of all the young people in responding detention centers.
> Mental health advocates, prison officials and juvenile court judges
> all testified that the findings matched their experiences. They
> recommended three types of solutions: more community mental health
> services, financed in part by Medicaid; more cooperation between
> police officials and mental health agencies; and more extensive
> insurance coverage for mental illness.
>
>


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