Nearly 2,000 Inmates In Local Jails Awaiting Psychiatric Hospital Slots

In a greater than 2,300-word story, the Washington Post (6/7, Morse) reports that “in 25 states surveyed this year by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center based in Arlington, Va., 1,956 inmates were in local jails waiting for psychiatric hospital slots, leaving them in facilities that were not designed to meet their needs at what can be triple the cost of tending to other inmates.”

One factor behind long waits for psychiatric beds, “say corrections officials and the Treatment Advocacy Center, is that more people with profound mental illness are being arrested and booked into jails, while the number of beds at state hospitals is not growing.” Meanwhile, “patients in the hospitals…are more acutely sick and more dangerous than in years past, which extends their stays.”

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— “Mental-health crisis ensnares inmates, judges, jailers and hospitals,” Dan Morse, Washington Post, June 7, 2016.

Posted in In The News.