This blog post is by Doctor Allen Francis on the need for better mental health care and gun control. Francis asserts that both have been neglected which is the reason behind the mass violence that we are seeing today. Francis quotes Professor Amanda Pustilnik saying, “The problem is that housing and treatment sound like ‘entitlements’- while prison sounds like (and is) punishment. As a culture that prizes self-reliance, we are cautious about extending benefits and suspicious of rewarding people for what looks like bad behavior. The punishment of people with mental illnesses who act out in public might also seem to fit with a certain notion of public order and personal responsibility.” This is an interesting take on why we’ve shifted to punishment of mental illness.
Doctor Allen Francis’s blog “Saving Normal” has a number of other posts that can be useful in analyzing the treatment of people with mental illness such as When is it Justified to Force Treatment on Someone and Sexual abuse of Psychiatric patients in Prison.
Mental Illness in America's Prisons 