The national issue of criminalizing our mentally ill [View all]

Biya Belayneh was already clinically diagnosed with schizophrenia, hypermania and bipolar disorder when he was wrongfully accused of assaulting a cellmate in jail. The allegation put him in solitary confinement in Maryland's Montgomery County Correctional Facility for a year.

By the time he was cleared of all charges for assaulting his cellmate and released from solitary confinement in 2019, his mental health had deteriorated considerably, according to Tizita Belachew, Belayneh's mother.

"He was worse than when he got in," Belachew told ABC News. "More isolated."

The mental health care system in the United States is dysfunctional, according to law enforcement and mental health care advocates. One result of that is people suffering from mental illnesses are often being incarcerated and deteriorating behind bars, says Sheriff Tony Thompson of Iowa's Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office.

"We're the greatest country in the world, but we leave people behind and then we pretend like they don't exist," Thompson told ABC News. "And we cannot simply arrest our way out of this problem."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/national-issue-criminalizing-mentally-ill/story?id=106324105

We need a forum here for Law and Criminal Justice. Two stories I posted today would fit better there.