Transinstitutionalisation

Transinstitutionalisation is the phenomenon where inmates released from one therapeutic community move into other institutions, either as planned move or as an unforeseen consequence. For instance, when the residential mental hospitals in the United States were closed as the result of a political policy change, the prison population increased by an equivalent number.

In the United States patients that would have formerly have been in psychiatric hospitals wound up in general hospitals and private nursing homes which then became a growth industry.

There is an over-representation of the mentally ill in corrective settings. There are 400,000 prison inmates with mental health problems, and 25–40% of the mentally ill will spend some time in prison.