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The World Health Organization is an organization that is concerned with the public’s health. They provide crucial roles in preventing and curing diseases, as well as providing information to the public about disease to spread awareness.

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There are people who are trying to make an effort in rehabilitating prisoners, rather than punish them. APA makes it a priority to change the incarcenated for the better. They believe that rehabilitation is a better option over punishing prisoners

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It's not a very good time to be a prisoner in the United States.

Incarceration is not meant to be fun, of course. But a combination of strict sentencing guidelines, budget shortfalls and a punitive philosophy of corrections has made today's prisons much more unpleasant--and much less likely to rehabilitate their inhabitants--than in the past, many researchers say.

What is the role for psychologists? First and foremost, they are providing mental health services to the prison population, which has rates of mental illness at least three times the national average.

More broadly, they are contributing a growing body of scientific evidence to political and philosophical discussions about the purpose of imprisonment, says Craig Haney, PhD, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"Psychology as a discipline now has a tremendous amount of information about the origins of criminal behavior," says Haney. "I think that it is important for psychologists to bring that information to bear in the debate on what kind of crime control policies we, as a society, should follow."

The punitive turn

Until the mid-1970s, rehabilitation was a key part of U.S. prison policy. Prisoners were encouraged to develop occupational skills and to resolve psychological problems--such as substance abuse or aggression--that might interfere with their reintegration into society. Indeed, many inmates received court sentences that mandated treatment for such problems.

Since then, however, rehabilitation has taken a back seat to a "get tough on crime" approach that sees punishment as prison's main function, says Haney. The approach has created explosive growth in the prison population, while having at most a modest effect on crime rates.

As a result, the United States now has more than 2 million people in prisons or jails--the equivalent of one in every 142 U.S. residents--and another four to five million people on probation or parole. A higher percentage of the population is involved in the criminal justice system in the United States than in any other developed country.

Many inmates have serious mental illnesses. Starting in the late 1950s and 1960s, new psychotropic drugs and the community health movement dramatically reduced the number of people in state mental hospitals. But in the 1980s, many of the mentally ill who had left mental institutions in the previous two decades began entering the criminal justice system.

Today, somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of people in prison are mentally ill, according to U.S. Department of Justice estimates.

"Prisons have really become, in many ways, the de facto mental health hospitals," says former prison psychologist Thomas Fagan, PhD. "But prisons weren't built to deal with mentally ill people; they were built to deal with criminals doing time."

The mentally ill

The plight of the mentally ill in prisons was virtually ignored for many years, but in the past decade many prison systems have realized--sometimes with prodding from the courts--that providing mental health care is a necessity, not a luxury, says Fagan.

In many prison systems, psychologists are the primary mental health care providers, with psychiatrists contracted on a part-time basis. Psychologists provide services ranging from screening new inmates for mental illness to providing group therapy and crisis counseling.

They also provide rehabilitative services that are useful even for prisoners without serious mental illnesses, says Fagan. For example, a psychologist might develop special programs for substance abusers or help prisoners prepare for the transition back to the community.

But they often struggle to implement such programs while keeping up with their regular prison caseloads. "We're focused so much on the basic mental health services that there's not enough time or emphasis to devote to rehabilitative services," says Robert Morgan, PhD, a psychologist at Texas Tech University who has worked in federal and state prisons and studies treatment methods for inmates.

Part of the problem is limited resources, says Morgan: There simply aren't enough mental health professionals in most prisons. Haney agrees: "Many psychologists in the criminal justice system have enormous caseloads; they're struggling not to be overwhelmed by the tide."

Another constraint is the basic philosophical difference between psychology, which is rehabilitative at heart, and corrections, which is currently punishment-oriented.

"Right now there's such a focus on punishment--most criminal justice or correctional systems are punitive in nature--that it's hard to develop effective rehabilitative programs," says Morgan.

Relevant research

To help shift the focus from punishment to rehabilitation, psychologists are doing research on the causes of crime and the psychological effects of incarceration.

In the 1970s, when major changes were being made to the U.S. prison system, psychologists had little hard data to contribute.

But in the past 25 years, says Haney, they have generated a massive literature documenting the importance of child abuse, poverty, early exposure to substance abuse and other risk factors for criminal behavior. The findings suggest that individual-centered approaches to crime prevention need to be complemented by community-based approaches.

Researchers have also found that the pessimistic "nothing works" attitude toward rehabilitation that helped justify punitive prison policies in the 1970s was overstated. When properly implemented, work programs, education and psychotherapy can ease prisoners' transitions to the free world, says Haney.

Finally, researchers have demonstrated the power of the prison environment to shape behavior, often to the detriment of both prisoners and prison workers.

The Stanford Prison Experiment, which Haney co-authored in 1973 with Stanford University psychologist and APA Past-president Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD, is one example. It showed that psychologically healthy individuals could become sadistic or depressed when placed in a prison-like environment.

More recently, Haney has been studying so-called "supermax" prisons--high-security units in which prisoners spend as many as 23 hours per day in solitary confinement for years at a time.

Haney's research has shown that many prisoners in supermax units experience extremely high levels of anxiety and other negative emotions. When released--often without any "decompression" period in lower-security facilities--they have few of the social or occupational skills necessary to succeed in the outside world.

Nonetheless, supermax facilities have become increasingly common over the past five to ten years.

"This is what prison systems do under emergency circumstances--they move to punitive social control mechanisms," explains Haney. "[But] it's a very short-term solution, and one that may do more long-term damage both to the system and to the individuals than it solves."

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Psychologists are not only providing treatment to prisoners; they're also contributing to debate over the nature of prison itself.

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WriteAPrisoner allows non-incarcenated people to become a pen pal to incarcenated participants. They can write to the incarcenated and change their lives.

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Prison pen pals seeking friendship. Inmates personal profiles, inmates legal profiles and inmate resumes. Men and women behind bars seeking letters on WriteAPrisoner. Write a prisoner today. We have thousands of pen pals in prison to select from.

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Medical Aid for the homeless and poor (Local)

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Medical Aid for the homeless and poor (Local)

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National Health Care for the Homeless Council provides medical aid for free or low cost to the homeless. There are many clinics that provide this service around the local community.

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National Health Care for the Homeless Council

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Need Help Now? Resources for People Experiencing Homelessness Are you experiencing homelessness? If so, you are not alone. This year, almost 2 million people will find themselves without housing in the United States. Resources are

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Prisoner Visitation and Support (PVS) is an organization that visits people in prison so they can reconnect to society. The federal prison system houses around 200,000 prisoners that live too far away from their homes to be visited by family. Because of this, volunteers sign up to visit the incarcerated. 98 percent of them eventually get released.

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Prisoner Visitation and Support (PVS) is a volunteer visitation program to federal and military prisoners throughout the United States.

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As the numbers for chronically ill are increasing, medical students continue to visit the chronically ill and sick. There are incredible results when visiting the chronically ill. The students also said that by visiting them, it increased their empathy and sensitivity toward the ill. There is also more awareness spread of chronic illness.

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Reflections of medical students on visiting chronically ill older patients in the home. - PubMed - NCBI

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J Am Geriatr Soc. 2006 Nov;54(11):1778-83. Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

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di Bartolo, Domenico. Care of the Sick. 1440-1441, watercolor and wet plastar, Santa Maria della Scalla, Siene, Italy.

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California Department of Aging (CDA)

The CDA visits and cares for the elderly. They visit adults that are disabled, family caregivers, and members that are in long term care facilities. The CDA receives donations from donators to support their foundation.

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California Department of Aging - Home Page

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The California Department of Aging (CDA) administers programs that serve older adults, adults with disabilities, family caregivers, and residents in long-term care facilities throughout the State. The Department administers funds allocated under the federal Older Americans Act, the Older Californians Act, and through the Medi-Cal program.