Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of the Criminalized Mentally Ill »

Mary Beth Pfeiffer is a Soros Justice Media Fellow who has written articles on prison conditions and the treatment of mentally ill inmates for numerous publications. A journalist for twenty-five years, she has been an investigative writer and editor for the Poughkeepsie Journal for the last decade. Her prison reporting has won her two National Headliners Awards, an Outstanding Achievement Award, a national Council on Crime and Celinquency citation, and six awards from the state Associated Press and state Publishers Association. In 2004 she was awarded a fellowship from the Open Society Institute to research articles on the imprisoned mentally ill.

Crazy in America shows how people suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, and other serious psychological illnesses are regularly incarcerated because alternative care is not available. Once behind bars, they are frequently punished again for behavior that is psychotic, not criminal.

A compelling and important examination of a shocking human rights abuse in our midst, Crazy in America is an indictment of a society that incarcerates its weakest and most vulnerable citizens — causing them to emerge sicker and more damaged.