I thank The Blade for urging Ohio to pave a new path toward treatment of people with mental illness, rather than continued mass incarceration (“Criminal negligence,” editorial, May 10). It’s cheaper, more effective, and preventative to provide treatment in the community.

What is not rehabilitative is spending life inside a cell, alone for 23 hours a day, with one hour of solitary recreation. More than 19 percent of people in Ohio prisons have a mental illness. About 450 of them are in Ohio’s two most-restrictive prisons, where they are routinely placed in long-term solitary confinement with little access to treatment.

A federal judge said putting people with mental illness in solitary confinement is the mental equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe.

With major medical and human rights organizations opposing solitary confinement, coupled with the fact that Ohio prisons serve as our largest psychiatric hospitals, it’s time to return people healed and rehabilitated to their families, not destroyed by solitude.

STEVE MILLER

Chairman Northwest Ohio Chapter American Civil Liberties Union Scottwood Avenue

First Published June 11, 2015, 4:00 a.m.