About a third of all Iowa prison inmates are clinically diagnosed with mental illness – the figure is closer to 60 percent for women inmates. It is fair to say that many of them would not be in prison but for the lack of better mental-health treatment alternatives. But Department of Corrections officials are resigned to the fact that in addition to housing and rehabilitating criminal offenders, they are running treatment programs for men and women afflicted with mental problems and/or drug and alcohol addictions.
Indeed, because of this reality, Iowa’s prison system may well be a national model for mental-health treatment.

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