Insane, Alisa Roth
Insane, Alisa Roth
7 Rating(s)
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Insane
America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness

Author: Alisa Roth

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 10 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/25/2018


Synopsis

An urgent exposé of the mental health crisis in our courts, jails, and prisons.

America has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. As many as half of all people in America's jails and prisons have a psychiatric disorder. One in four fatal police shootings involves a person with such disorders.

In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to show how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker.

Through intimate stories of people in the system and those trying to fix it, Roth reveals the hidden forces behind this crisis and suggests how a fairer and more humane approach might look. Insane is a galvanizing wake-up call for criminal justice reformers and anyone concerned about the plight of our most vulnerable.

About Alisa Roth

Alisa Roth is a former staff reporter for Marketplace and frequent contributor to various NPR programs. A Soros Justice Fellow, her work has also appeared in the New York Review of Books and New York Times. She lives in New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara on May 01, 2023

4.5 stars As a 2014-2015 'Soros Justice Fellow', investigative journalist Alisa Roth spent a year studying the plight of mentally ill prisoners in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Roth visited jails and prisons in New York, Illinois, California, Georgia, and Oklahoma. She also interviewed mentally......more

Goodreads review by JEN A on May 22, 2020

I received an advanced copy of this book from Net Galley and the publisher in return for an honest review. The release date for this book is 9 June 2020 Full disclosure with this, I have suffered with mental illness my entire life so any work that deals with it draws my attention. Luckily, I have nev......more

Goodreads review by Jake on August 23, 2019

Some sources say, upon his journey to the continent of north America the famous British writer, Charles Dickens, creator of Oliver twist, defender of humanity, had sworn to himself to see two things in this once new world. 1. Niagara falls 2. Eastern state penitentiary. (The famous Philadelphia base......more

Goodreads review by JEN A on May 22, 2020

Full disclosure with this, I have suffered with mental illness my entire life so any work that deals with it draws my attention. Luckily, I have never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia which is talked about a lot in this book nor have I been incarcerated. That being said, I found......more

Goodreads review by Lmcelebre on July 28, 2018

Roth does a great job of exposing some of the real inadequacies in our criminal justice system as they relate to mental health and I think her appraisal of the situation is fair and accurate. While I don't think she necessarily brings us any closer to resolution, I think her book may help to open up......more