Mental Health Screening for Prisoners Upon Entrance to State Prisons

Abstract

The prison system has left a penal system that strives to rehabilitate an offender, for one that simply punishes. This is detrimental for prisoners with mental disorders, as their condition may worsen exponentially with incarceration. This research examines the mental health screening processes for prisoners upon entrance to state prisons across the United States, by identifying the screening process via state policies. State policies were identified by going onto the respective DOC websites for every state, and reading through the mental health/health policy in order to identify whether or not there were mental health screening processes in place. The resulting analysis reveals that most states do mandate an initial mental health screening for prisoners, although, they do use an array of screening tools to do so. An array of screening tools makes it difficult to assess the systems with best practices and systems in need of improvement, and a national standard of testing would benefit the data collection for future projects.