For our fourth fieldwork we had an interview with Cheryl Roberts, the head of the Greenburger center, a recently founded organization that is working on an alternative to prison for people with mental illnesses. The Greenburger center was founded last year by Francis Greenburger, but lead by Cheryl Roberts. As said before the Greenburger center’s primary goal is to provide an alternative to prison for mentally ill who have committed crimes. In the 19th century there were many secure mental institutions based on moral treatments. But after some time they became over stretched, isolated, and neglectful of their patients. After the 20th century the conditions had worsened severely. But in 1955 President Kennedy issued the deinstitutionalization, a procedure that would gradually shut down all of the secure mental hospitals and transfer all of the patients to local, more caring facilities. Unfortunately that second step never happened, and over 1 million mentally ill patients were thrown onto the streets. And with their various conditions they had no options and almost all of them were sent to prison, because without the capacity to maintain a job, it was only a matter of time. And while the hospitals were neglectful, prison offered no treatment whatsoever, and that is the state of these poor souls now. Cheryl Roberts and the Greenburger Center are working hard to fix it though, their hope is to re-establish some form of caring mental hospital, secured if necessary.
