People who suffer from mental health issues are in jails rather than in facilities, and when they’re put in jails, those with worse mental states have been shown to be incarcerated or tortured. “In 44 states, a jail or prison holds more mentally ill individuals than the largest remaining state psychiatric hospital; in every county in the United States with both a county jail and a county psychiatric facility, more seriously mentally ill individuals are incarcerated than hospitalized.” says the Treatment Advocacy Center. This emphasizes a quote from Just Mercy written by Bryan Stevenson that states, “And prison is a terrible place for someone with mental illness or a neurological disorder that prison guards are not trained to understand.” When guards can not understand what the prisoners are dealing with, it becomes a situation where guards brush off the prisoners previous trauma and beat or abuse them. Another example taken from the Treatment Advocacy Center is “A 2004–2005 survey found there were “more than three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals.”’This shows some cases of overcrowding, which plays into the fact that there are other people that believe that mental health patients who have committed crimes should be treated like other prisoners and not be helped by being put in a facility. They need that help so that maybe someday they can live worry free. There are also those who don't care enough to pay for more facilities to be built even though we need them for those prisoners.

Another issue caused by people not being put into facilities is overcrowding like I mentioned earlier. Here Bryan Stevenson states that “Most prisons are overcrowded and don’t have the capacity to provide care and treatment to the mentally ill.” And because of this it can cause their mental state to worsen more and more. Here Bryan Stevenson also says “For some, mental illness has developed in prison, as a result of stress and trauma.” He also names one of these prisoners and shows us what these conditions can do to those not mentally well “But Avery Jenkins’s letters, handwritten in print so small I needed a magnifying glass to read them, convinced me that he had been very ill for a very long time.” Which means he hasn’t gotten any help and he clearly needed it. Bryan Stevenson then later states that “The multiple stab wounds inflicted on the victim strongly suggested mental illness, but the court records and files never referenced anything about Jenkins suffering from a disability.” This emphasizes that he has not and most likely will not receive any sort of care in his prison for his mental state.

There are so many people in these facilities but not enough. This could be because we don’t have enough, so why don’t we have more? So many current prisoners who committed crimes or didn't, suffer from mental health which is shown here in these statistics from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

 “In 2014, there were 744,600 inmates in county and city jails in the United States. If 20% of these individuals had a serious mental illness, jail inmates with severe psychiatric disease in US jails numbered approximately 149,000 that year. The number has grown since then.”
This shows that more people need help. Not just in prisons where the mental state can worsen or develop, but when they’re free and before they commit or are accused of their crime. Here’s another quote from the Treatment Advocacy Center.

“In 2014, there were 1,561,500 inmates in state prisons. If 15% of them had a serious mental illness, state prison inmates with severe psychiatric disease numbered approximately 234,200 that year. The number has grown since then.”
In state prison at least 15% of them in 2014 suffered from mental illness. That’s so many people that need help which seems impossible to provide in these prisons where they’re kept. Here is the combination of mental health prisoners in jails from the Treatment Advocacy Center

“Combining the estimated populations of jail and state prison inmates with serious mental illness produces an estimated population of 383,200 affected inmates. Since there are only approximately 38,000 individuals with serious mental illness remaining in state mental hospitals, this means 10 times more individuals with serious mental illness are in jails and state prisons than in the remaining state mental hospitals.”  
There are so many people here that just need help, yet we haven't given it to them, but we don’t even have a reason for that. Here the Treatment Advocacy Center also states “The US Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2006 found that “an estimated 10% of state prisoners . . . reported symptoms that met criteria for a psychotic disorder.” Given the continued growth of mental illness in the criminal justice system since the DOJ data was collected in 2004, a prevalence rate of 15% would appear to be conservative at this time.” Here it shows that there are still quite a lot of mental health prisoners with a more severe mental state. Another example of a severe mental state also from the Treatment Advocacy Center is  “2009 study based on inmate interviews conducted in Maryland and New York jails found that, within the month previous to the survey, 16.7% of the inmates (14.5% of males and 31% of females) had symptoms of a serious mental illness (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, major depression or brief psychotic disorder). However, 31% of the inmates who were asked to participate in the study refused, a subset that almost certainly included many individuals with paranoid schizophrenia. The interviews were conducted between 2002 and 2006. Given the continued growth of mental illness in the criminal justice system since that time and the high rate of refusers in the survey, it is reasonable to estimate that approximately 20% of jail inmates today have a serious mental illness.” This is how these people are treated, they’re put to work and abused by the officers. They need mental care and a safe place to be, not a prison cell that just causes those issues to grow. Some of those people get tortured more than others for no fair reason. They can’t help it yet here we are.Why haven’t we helped? Why don't we help? Well you could if you donate to the Treatment Advocacy Center. They use the AOT program which stands for Assisted Outpatient Treatment, which also means that they practice providing community-based mental health care under the civil court commitment. So if you want to help go to their website and learn more, but if you really want to make a change in your own way become a therapist or a psychiatrist and help those who need it.