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Mentally ill, unconvicted, in jail, and waiting for a hospital bed.
June 10, 2019
In many states across the country, there are far too few hospital beds for mentally ill people, including people deemed incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness. In most cases, this means unconvicted people are sent to jail until a spot opens up, further exacerbating people’s mental illnesses and placing them far away from adequate resources. This is a nationwide problem that “experts say may be linked to the downsizing of psychiatric hospitals and inadequate community mental-health resources.”