Entangled: How People With Serious Mental Illness Get Caught in Misdemeanor Systems

People with serious mental illness (SMI) are prominently and unjustly overrepresented in the criminal legal system. More than one-third—and in some studies more than two-thirds—of those with SMI have a lifetime history of arrest. For the first time, a single volume takes a deep dive into the common behaviors, contexts, and decisions that lead to misdemeanor arrests.

Contributors representing the fields of anthropology, social work, criminology, and psychiatry draw on data from a mixed-method...