AASP499L

This course will explore the public policy implications of the criminalization of mental illness and its disproportionate impact on African-Americans and other marginalized groups in the US. During the past three decades, the number of people with serious mental illness who are sentenced and held in local, state, and federal detention has exponentially increased. We will trace the social, economic, political, and historical factors that aligned to produce this outcome. "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Fyodor Dostoevsky