Veterans with PTSD still being locked up instead of helped out

Treatment Behind Bars: Jails Struggling With Flood of Mentally Ill

Revolving door complicates care, management and safety of inmates.

A U.S. veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder sits in a segregated holding pen at Chicago's Cook County Jail after he was arrested on a narcotics charge. The complex is one of the country's largest single-site jails.

Charles Rex Arbogast | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By ADAM GELLER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: Monday, July 14, 2014 at 10:05 p.m.

Last Modified: Monday, July 14, 2014 at 10:05 p.m.

CHICAGO | The numbers, posted daily on the Cook County sheriff's website, would be alarming at an urgent care clinic, let alone a jail: On a Wednesday, 36 percent of all new arrivals report having a mental illness. On a Friday, it's 54 percent.

But inside the razor wire framing the 96-acre compound, the faces and voices of the newly arrested confirm its accidental role as Chicago's treatment center of last resort for people with serious mental illnesses. It's a job thrust on many of the nation's 3,300 local jails, and like them, it is awash in a tide of bookings and releases that make it particularly unsuited for the task.

Peering through the chain link of an intake area holding pen, a 33-year-old man wrapped in a navy varsity jacket leans toward clinical social worker Elli Petacque Montgomery, his bulging eyes a clue that something's not right.

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