Mental health held prisoner

Due to lack of funding from local and state government, mental health facilities have been shutting down across the country with no alternatives in place to continue the needed services. The mental health community is under-funded and unavailable to those with mental illness. According to Jamie Fellner, director of the Program of Human Rights Watch, “Unless you are wealthy, it can be next to impossible to receive mental health services in the community,” adding that “many prisoners might never have ended up behind bars if publicly funded treatment had been available.”