We can’t rehabilitate while actively harming the mental health of prisoners
I realize that in 2025 America, it might be a bit naïve of me to wonder why we don’t even try to rehabilitate someone who winds up in prison. However, given the large number of people struggling with severe mental health conditions who wind up in jail, I think it’s legitimate to ask questions about what we expect life to look like after prison for them.
The article below focuses on another group that is imprisoned in vast numbers. Black men represent a significant percentage of the prison population in this country, far more than would be expected given their representation in the overall population.
One more thing to note, the US has the most people in prison in the world. (That was at the start of 2025. I’m sure it’s higher now.)
With the statistics about prison being what they are, I think it’s fair to say that a system that causes harm to hundreds of thousands of people every year is not good for society, and yet we continue to see articles like this one:
Studies show that Black men who have experienced incarceration have higher rates of PTSD, depression and psychological distress compared with Black men who have never been incarcerated.
Many formerly incarcerated men described experiencing or witnessing violence, including being beaten by correctional officers and witnessing close friends get assaulted or killed.
Being in prison is a traumatic experience in and of itself. Experiencing violence, witnessing death, sexual assault, etc., are additional traumas. We know for a fact that the higher the number of traumatic events that occur in our lives, the higher the rates of mental health issues. Yet, when it comes to prisoners, we seem not to care. We joke about violence and sexual assault in prison. We do nothing to combat corruption and violence among people who work in prisons, and we cut programs aimed at helping people adjust once outside of prison. We choose who goes to jail versus receiving another sentence for a crime, knowing that we are choosing who not to harm. If we didn’t already know that prison is causing further harm, we would not have judges out here talking openly about ruining a defendant’s life by sending them to prison. They know that sending someone to prison is an active harm against their mental and physical health.
The government should not be in the business of causing more harm to people while also trying to claim to care about mental health.
