Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Governing Through Crime

Criminal Law

: Governing Through Crime

Our "Crazy" Penal State: Why New Rules on Insurance for Mental Health May Reduce Incarceration

By Jonathan Simor

Only in America would we rely heavily on jails and prisons to house many of the severely mentally ill whose untreated symptoms have driven away family and whose pursuit of self medication brings them into contact with crime and law enforcement. Two generations ago we held such people in state mental hospitals. No one intended to transfer them to jails, but a long period of declining social welfare and a war on crime has produced that result. It is thus good news that as of this July, federal law will start requiring health insurance provided by employers to treat mental and physical illness with parity (read Robert Pear's reporting in the NYTimes). For decades, insurance companies have kept benefits in general for mental illness, and hospitalization in particular, at far lower levels than equivalent provision for physical illnesses...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on January 30, 2010 (boomark / email).