ces following their release. They leave prison without employment or benefits or insurance and, very likely, without anywhere to live. The Department of Correctional Services gives releasees $40, a bus ticket home, and a list of parole conditions. OMH has a policy of providing all seriously mentally ill releasees with a two week supply of medication plus a prescription for an additional two weeks, but it is not clear that all prisoners who need medications following release are included by this policy, and even those who are will have a four-week gap between when they run out of medication and when they receive the Medicaid benefits they need to fill a prescription. For most prisoners with mental illness, this is the extent of the discharge planning they receive. Some prisoners, particularly those receiving intensive mental health services, do receive discharge planning before they are released. OMH has a discharge planner at each satellite unit and the NYC-LINK program has four transition support counselors working with inmates leaving state prison. These services are located in Level I and Level II facilities, however, and do not reach anywhere near all the inmates who need them. Some people with serious mental illness are able to function better in a highly structured environment than in an unstructured one. The extreme regimentation of prison, while certainly not therapeutic, may actually help some inmates with mental illness to maintain a higher level of functioning than they would be able to manage in the community, thus masking their great need for discharge planning and support following release. For example, some inmates with serious mental illness are able to function in Level III or Level IV facilities as long as they get psychotropic medications. When they near release, however, they are unlikely to be the recipients of scarce discharge planning resources, because those resources are concentrated in Level I and Level II faci...
