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Western Undergraduate Psychology Journal

Article Title

Enhancing Forensic Mental Health Care Through the Improvement of Forensic Screening Procedures

Abstract

Learning how to effectively treat individuals with diagnosed psychopathology in the criminal justice system is an important undertaking given the large number of offenders with significant mental health concerns. Despite the fact that offender rehabilitation has been shown to be more effective in forensic psychiatric institutions than in correctional institutions, there are still a large number of mentally ill offenders receiving inadequate treatment while incarcerated. This paper asserts that correctional sentencing needs to become more individualized through improved psychopathology screening procedures in order to ensure successful rehabilitation and reintegration of all types of offenders into the community. By improving the screening process, more offenders with mental health concerns can be diverted from prison and confinement, and more individualized, and therefore, effective treatment strategies can be employed. This paper iterates the various ways to achieve this goal and highlights the importance of improving screening practices.

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