Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System Essay

Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System - Essay Example justice system and on the offenders themselves, the options which are available for such offenders to be treated and corrected, how the psychiatric services, the community and other agencies can help to successfully combat the problem: are reviewed and solutions are sought in this paper. Hiday (p.508) states that there are three subgroups of persons with severe mental illness who come into contact with the criminal justice system: 1) Those committing only misdemeanor offences that often involve survival behaviors 2) Those with accompanying character disorders who also abuse alcohol and drugs, both of which contribute to their high rates of criminal offenses, arrests and incarceration 3) A much smaller subgroup who fit the stereotypical image of a severely disordered person driven to criminally violent actions by delusions. All three groups live in impoverished communities where it is difficult to survive with a major mental illness. After the failure of other social institutions, the criminal justice system is left to deal with the mentally ill person. Understanding federalism: the interaction among national, state and local governments becomes crucial to understanding mental health policy development. From the earliest days of the republic, mental health care was a sector operating in the intersection of state and local levels of government. The advent of Medicaid and Medicare in the 1960s, coupled with the national community mental health center (CMHC) program eventually created a major federal presence in financing mental health services. Yet the role of states and mental health communities within the mental health system continued alongside such initiatives, and in some ways was elaborated by the partnership required by some of the services (Rochefort: 467). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV), the term serious mental illness refers to diagnosable mental, behavioral or

Macroeconomics. Price level Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Macroeconomics. Price level - Essay Example Economists have noted that in long run, inflation and unemployment becomes increasingly unrelated to each other. That means a change in the unemployment seems to have little or no effect on the inflation and vice versa. Inflation is also inversely proportional to the total consumer spending. As inflation goes up consumers are wary of spending and hold their purchases as dearly as possible. This is due to the fact that when prices rise there is also a hike in the expected price levels in the future that has an adverse effect on the consumer spending. When prices increase the consumer spending power comes down and disposable incomes are significantly lower. When unemployment is low and there is an increase in price level, wages will rise in response to higher prices. This is because in low unemployment situation, employees can successfully demand full compensation for the higher prices. This has spiralling effect on both the wages and general input costs along with the rate of inflation. All these factors tend to leapfrog each other under low unemployment. When unemployment is moderate, however, the employees will not be compensated in full and will have to settle for less, and so the wage costs do not rise as fast as prices when unemployment is high. ... This will stop the rise of the prices and rate of increase in inflation. Under full unemployment, the wage costs will be sufficiently low to hold the prices down and unless the regulatory authorities step in the market will go into a deflationary mode. In between the full and low rate of unemployment there is a certain level that's just high enough that costs and prices rise at the same level, so that inflation remains a stable level. (Pettinger). This unique rate of unemployment is called the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment or NAIRU in short. Economists note that in developed economies such as Australia, the tendency of the rate of unemployment automatically has a tendency to reach the NAIRU rate of employment. Whenever there is inflationary pressure, the unemployment in the long term adjusts itself towards NAIRU rendering the short term Phillips curve invalid. The below figure shows that "an extra one percentage point of unemployment pushes the inflation rate down by about 0.4 percentage points in the following year--more in some years, less than others." (DeLong, 2002). Expectation of a price rise' & its impact on consumption spending: When inflation is on the rise and prices of commodities increases, it raises the expectation of the price level also. Initially higher inflation expectations can have an emotional effect because when consumers expect a generalized rise in prices across essential goods and services, then it makes them accelerate their spending to prevent paying higher prices later, providing a near-term increase in consumption. However provided the interest rates are not changed, the consumptions comes down as people adjust their spending to match their dispensable income until they