'Insane': America's 3 Largest Psychiatric Facilities Are Jails
Alisa Roth's new book suggests U.S. jails and prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill. They often get sicker in these facilities, Roth says, because they don't get appropriate treatment.
In jails and prisons across the United States, mental illness is prevalent and psychiatric disorders often worsen because inmates don't get the treatment they need, says journalist Alisa Roth.
In her new book Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, Roth investigates the widespread incarceration of the mentally ill in the U.S., and what she sees as impossible burdens placed on correctional officers to act as mental health providers when they're not adequately trained.
"It's unpleasant, it's loud, it's claustrophobic," she tells NPR's . "You see people who are desperately sick. I mean, desperately sick. One time when I was [at
