Soros Justice Fellowships
Soros Justice FellowshipsApplication Guidelines | Grantee List
Grantees
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Mary Beth Pfeiffer
The nation’s prisons have become the asylums of the 21st century. An estimated quarter million inmates nationwide—16 percent of the prison population—are mentally ill, three times the number of patients in psychiatric hospitals. Ms. Pfeiffer will write national articles on the incarcerated mentally ill and the conditions under which they are treated and housed. Pfeiffer has written extensively about care of the mentally ill in New York State prisons, focusing on suicides in disciplinary units, to which psychotic inmates are often relegated for long periods without adequate mental health care. Her project will explore the roots of the problem in de-institutionalization policy; the role of harsh drug laws; the penal system’s response to the mentally ill population, and current attempts at reform, including legislation and court action. She will also focus on the victims of this new reality, including families who lost mentally ill sons and daughters to the criminal justice system and inmates themselves who were unable to cope in prisons and took their own lives.
2004 Stone Ridge, NY | |
