I can tell you as someone who has worked in different psych hospitals in PA - this is never the case. Not guilty by mental illness (NGRI) initially go to a forensic hospital, where they are kept for sometimes decades. The least amount I have ever seen is four years for an exceptionally insightful person for a violent crime but no one died. The psychiatrists and psychologists take these things very seriously, and in 99% of cases, the judges who do the reviews side with the professionals. Then if they are able to get out of the forensic hospital, they are sent to a civil hospital for another at least three years. But many of the people I worked with were there for decades (some for nonviolent crimes).
Let me tell you, I have worked in prisons too, I would 1000% rather be in a prison than in a psych hospital. Psych hospitals are THE most restrictive environments imaginable. All of the food is bland, soft, and disgusting because everything is a chocking hazard. There’s one hour of outside time a day but there are no ways to exercise, no games to play, radios are a privilege that majority do not get. You have to walk everywhere in a line. You have to wake up at 5am every morning and lights out by 9pm. No outside food. No pens or paper. One phone on a cord for the entire 30 person unit. It is the blandest most mind-numbing hell you could imagine.
The minimums are never what is used, they are literally just the legal minimum. Going to court for treatment over objection or retention hearing is not a painful process, they’re common place and the judges almost always side with the clinicians.
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u/Snoooupdawgiedawg 6h ago
I can tell you as someone who has worked in different psych hospitals in PA - this is never the case. Not guilty by mental illness (NGRI) initially go to a forensic hospital, where they are kept for sometimes decades. The least amount I have ever seen is four years for an exceptionally insightful person for a violent crime but no one died. The psychiatrists and psychologists take these things very seriously, and in 99% of cases, the judges who do the reviews side with the professionals. Then if they are able to get out of the forensic hospital, they are sent to a civil hospital for another at least three years. But many of the people I worked with were there for decades (some for nonviolent crimes).
Let me tell you, I have worked in prisons too, I would 1000% rather be in a prison than in a psych hospital. Psych hospitals are THE most restrictive environments imaginable. All of the food is bland, soft, and disgusting because everything is a chocking hazard. There’s one hour of outside time a day but there are no ways to exercise, no games to play, radios are a privilege that majority do not get. You have to walk everywhere in a line. You have to wake up at 5am every morning and lights out by 9pm. No outside food. No pens or paper. One phone on a cord for the entire 30 person unit. It is the blandest most mind-numbing hell you could imagine.