This is a pretty sobering book to read, although it's fascinating. Roth went deep inside the criminal justice system to explore how and why it has become the main place for people with mental illness to end up, and how those people are often denied proper treatment and are punished in ways that make them sicker. Roth personally interviewed people for this book, so you get facts and her analysis, but you also get stories from real people --- and that makes this book especially hard-hitting. You can read cold facts and not have a reaction, but it's hard not to feel something when you read some of the stories of people who have wound up in the criminal justice system. Mental illness affects more than half of the inmates in U.S. prisons, so when you read about overcrowding in jails and prisons, keep that in mind. Mass incarceration has exacerbated this problem so that now correctional facilities have become the mental health providers by default. But, of course, there are too few resources and too many people who need them.
The book is organized around the process of criminalization, so you get a clear picture of the proces from the beginning. Roth touches on history in order to bring light to current practices and also explores some of what people have been working on to resolve some of the issues that are currently problematic.
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