New Ruderman Family Foundation white paper reveals how the road to prison starts in childhood
A new white paper released by the Ruderman Family Foundation has revealed the daunting extent in which children with mental illnesses have their civil rights systematically violated, resulting in over half of all inmates in the U.S. having a mental illness.
The white paper argues that this widespread discrimination starts early, even from kindergarten in most cases, often cumulating in non-completion of high school, problems with the law, and results in homelessness and/or incarceration in adulthood.
Unlike people with visible or apparent disabilities, people with non-apparent disabilities often don’t receive accommodations guaranteed to them under the Americans with Disabilities Act due to their invisible nature. Instead of getting reasonable accommodations and access to services, this population gets criminalized, often referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline which affects people with disabilities at a much higher rate.
To review the statistics revealed by the white paper continue to the full article at the link below.
This post written by Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer for the New York Jewish Week. Originally posted on September 5, 2017