"The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars" (from NYT)

Fascinating data appeared today in a New York Times Op-Ed by Bernard E. Harcourt of the University of Chicago. The data illustrate major twentieth-century trends:

• De-institutionalization (1958-1980) and re-institutionalization (1982-2000)
• Drop in the numbers in mental hospitals
• Increasing numbers in prison since 1980

Harcourt frames these data by asking the question: "Why did we diagnose deviance in such radically different ways over the course of the 20th century?"