Homelessness in a Mentally Ill Urban Jail Population
Abstract
officers,who reportthat their clientsPhyllis JeffreyMaureen ArthurL. Solomon, Ph.D. N. Draine, M.S.W. 0. Marcenko, Ph.D. T. Meyerson, M.D.Researchers have sought to establish the proportion of persons with serious and persistent mental illness among homeless adults. Related studies have found rates of homelessness or the risk of homelessness among psychiatric inpatient populations to be between 9 and 1 3 percent (1,2). Belcher (3), who followed a cohort of state hospital patients, found that 36 percent became homeless within six months after discharge. Others have found that many mentally ill homeless adults have been involved with police or have been incarcerated (4). Prevalance of severe mental disorder among jail detainees has been found to be two or three times greater than in the general population (5). The criminal justice system provides, by default, primary care to many homeless mentally ill persons (4). Some evidence indicates that homeless persons are not more proneto criminal behavior, but that the crimes they commit are survival strategies (4,6). Snow and colleagues (6) found that most arrests among homeless persons, as compared with domiciled persons, were for ânonviolent, relatively minor, and victimless offensesâ and that crimes among homeless persons were most often committed by those under