Keeping the Mentally Ill Out of Jail

Stephen Eide joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss how America’s health-care system fails the mentally ill, and the steps that cities and states are taking to keep the mentally ill out of jail and get them into treatment.

Urban areas have seen a disturbing rise in street disorder and homelessness over the last decade. Unfortunately, many of the street homeless suffer from serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Despite federalspending of about $150 billion annually on mental illness programs, individuals with the most severe diagnoses areoften thrown into a repeating cycle of jail stays, homelessness, and hospitalizations.

In response, many states and cities are developing their own methods to keep the severely mentally ill out of jail. Launched in 2000, Miami-Dade County’s Criminal Mental Health Project is one of the nation’s most admired and successful of these programs.