LEHIGH VALLEY MORNING CALL Op Ed: The closure of psychiatric hospitals, without providing sufficient aftercare, contributed to the explosion of our prison population. In Pennsylvania alone, inmates increased from 8,000 to 51,000 in 30 years.
Recent “smart-on-crime” legislation of 2012 in Pennsylvania has begun to reverse this by placing nonviolent drug and alcohol offenders in community correction centers and by not returning technical parole violators back to prison.
Uncorrected, however, is the overuse of solitary confinement. In Pennsylvania, about 2,400 inmates exist in isolation, many with poorly treated or untreated mental and intellectual disabilities… (more)
