America’s Prison Crisis: The Mental Health Epidemic Behind Bars

Brandon Lewis explains how the failure to address mental health in prison leads to tragic, preventable consequences both inside and outside prison walls.

I’m currently housed in cell 23. In cell 24, there is a young man in his early twenties. He has no clear family support, so he has no television. All day and night, he sits in the cell, making strange sounds, from time to time mixed with violent, cursing outbursts.

Two cells down is one of the best artists I’ve ever seen. But he hears voices that not only tell him to kill others, but also to kill himself. He has acted on both.

Two cells from him is one of my friends. Lately he has fallen into a deep depression. He hasn’t left his cell in days and only eats the single sack placed in his food slot per day. His cell smells horrible.

Last we come to his neighbor. He comes out and seems to be a normal person. But when he locks back in, he screams and curses, arguing with an invisible, inaudible man, sometimes at 2:00 in the morning. I’ve recently discovered he’s in prison for killing his grandmother.

None of these inmates gets any mental health treatment. The officers don’t even know they exist. Sooner or later, they’ll hurt someone, hurt themselves, or reach their out dates and go home. The next time they’ll be seen will be at the grocery store, standing next to you and your family.

Carlos: The Cost of Neglecting Mental Health

Carlos is a young man with severe mental health issues, in and out of jail and prison his entire life. He sits on a train in Carolina with God only knows what going through his head.

Many people ask why he’s out of prison. Yet he hasn’t committed any crime that would lock him away for life. The true question is why wasn’t he helped any of the times he was in jail or prison? Why didn’t this so-called rehabilitative system rehabilitate him?

The answer is the Indiana DOC is a joke that’s not funny. It’s a system of human warehousing revolving around capitalism that truly has nothing to do with rehabilitation. These people are sick, and our society ignores them as long as it possibly can.

Now here comes 23-year-old, Lryna, a pretty young woman who escaped the Ukraine war and made it to America. She got off work and boarded a bus in Charlotte, Carolina, sitting directly in front of Carlos. Without any warning, he stood and stabbed her to death.

Politicians scream death penalty. Pundits call for the head of the judge who let him out. And I’m the actually rehabilitated inmates who, through family support, became better will have a harder time getting modified.

There needs to be real funding for prisons for the criminally insane, where people like Carlos can get help. If you don’t think this is an issue that needs to be solved immediately, ask Lryna’s family; she survived the Ukraine war only to be killed on an American train.

My Experience With Abuse

In 2021, I was put in lockup under investigation, with no writeup of any kind. The conditions were horrible. So bad that four inmates killed themselves within a seven-day period. Three of them were on the same lockup unit.

Imagine what that does to a person’s psyche. I think of myself as a sane and very pragmatic person, yet even I began having harmful thoughts.

That December, on the morning of the 21st, I was awakened and asked if I wanted to talk to someone in mental health. I had turned in a medical slip earlier, saying this environment was really getting to me. A month later, this was my chance to be seen.

I was cuffed and shackled, brought to a metal booth the size of a phone booth, and locked inside. Minutes later, a woman came, squinting to see me through the scratched-up glass. She listened as I told her about the conditions she saw every day, and she told me to hang in there. I have an “A” mental health code, so the 15-minute, once-a-month visit is all I qualified for.

She left, and I felt like I was woken up for nothing. Plus, I had to use the bathroom. I asked the officer to return me to my cell, and he told me, “You don’t give me orders!” I explained I had to use the bathroom, and I will spare the reader his vulgar response.

Six hours later, I was still in the shakedown booth. My red jumpsuit was soaked in urine. I was on my knees in the tiny space; I’d had a panic attack as the officers laughed. The case managers finally forced them to let me out and return me to my cell. But they refused me the dignity of a shower, and that was that.

Two weeks later, I was let off of lock-up and sent back to population. I remember pushing the cart into the cell house. I was angry, full of a simmering rage.

That was one of the few things I remember. As soon as I got in the cell house, I snapped. The second I got around other people, I lost it. I hit a man in the jaw so hard it broke his ankle. I knocked out his teeth and broke his eye socket, injuring his brain. I got an outside case with three years added onto my sentence. To this day, I can’t remember everything. I was off lockup only five minutes.

Jamel: The Long-Term Consequences of Ignoring Mental Health

In September 2025, Jamel’s story came across the news. He was walking up the sidewalk of a New York suburb and came across an elderly man. He asked the man for help charging his phone, and the man said okay.

Once inside the man’s home, Jamel beat and stabbed him, cuffing him to a wooden beam in the basement. He found the man’s wife upstairs and assaulted her. Then he burned the house to the ground, killing them both. He is still at large.

Jamel’s criminal history spans 30 years. He had just done 16 years. Why was he not rehabilitated? Why are the failures of the DOC not a huge part of this conversation? What other business can fail so miserably at its mission statement—to correct and rehabilitate—and face no scrutiny?

Yes, Jamel is a monster, but for the past 30 years, he has gone through America’s de-monstrosity program. Why are we as a society not demanding results?

A Call for True Rehabilitation and Reform

The hard truth is, if I choose to, I can drink and smoke my way to an out date. Within these walls, no one cares. The programs should be mandatory. I shouldn’t be allowed to just sit around 24 hours per day, seven days per week, with zero rehabilitation responsibilities.

Mental health resources should be tripled, and out dates should be based around program material retention, mental health, and societal readiness.

If this makes no sense to you as a member of society, understand this: A lack of investment on this side of the wall means you’d better continue to think twice when someone asks you to help them charge their phone.

Interested in reading more? Don’t miss Wild Card Inmates, Mental Health Failures, and the Case for Real Prison Rehabilitation

The post America’s Prison Crisis: The Mental Health Epidemic Behind Bars first appeared on Prison Writers.