The nation’s jails and prisons hold hundreds of thousands of people with severe mental illness who receive inadequate treatment and many times do not belong behind bars.  As an editorial in the Boston Globe highlights today, suicide among that vulnerable population occurs at an alarming rate. The editorial suggests that the path to prevention of suicide in jails is clear – and that a commission needs to be formed.   

What the Globe fails to address is the reason that individuals with mental illness are ending up in jail – rather than treatment – in the first place. Massachusetts is one of only six states in the country without an assisted outpatient treatment law. The state has one of the most antiquated mental health treatment laws in the country, one that forces severely mentally ill persons to be dangerous before they can get help. Oftentimes, the individual instead ends up in jail. Next legislative session, the state has an opportunity to improve its mental health treatment laws – not only to prevent suicides among those with mental illness in jail but to prevent the crimes that land people there in the first place.