On a nearby counter, a nurse took down notes for a Hispanic inmate with an injured eye. “Of those four,” she said, pointing to the descriptors, “I have three mentally ill people.” The overwhelming majority had been arrested for “crimes of survival” such as retail theft (to find food or supplies) or breaking and entering (to find a place to sleep). Details from four new inmates could fit on a single sheet. The forms are designed to help jail officials identify which inmates have mental illnesses as early as possible. Small boxes listed possible illnesses: bipolar disorder, ADHD, schizophrenia, and so on. She showed me a medical intake form filled with blue pen scribbles. “This is typically what I see everyday,” said Elli Petacque-Montgomery, a psychologist and the deputy director of mental health policy for the sheriff’s department. NAMI estimates that between 25 and 40 percent of all mentally ill Americans will be jailed or incarcerated at some point in their lives. Louis-according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. At least 400,000 inmates currently behind bars in the United States suffer from some type of mental illness-a population larger than the cities of Cleveland, New Orleans, or St. And the doctors here want to know what they are.Īt Cook County Jail, an estimated one in three inmates has some form of mental illness. If you can sleep through this, you’re fighting far greater demons than the commotion outside. But some-perhaps two or three per holding pen-were lying on the floor, asleep.
Many inmates were standing, sitting, or milling around. On this Monday, when those arrested over the weekend in Chicago and its suburbs filled the fenced cages, that din became a roar. Human voices echoed off the featureless walls, creating an omnipresent din. Even those who run the jail get lost down here from time to time, they told me.
Signs and directions are intentionally left off the smooth concrete corridors to hinder escape attempts. A labyrinth of tunnels connects the jail’s buildings to one another and to the Cook County Criminal Court. Pre-bail processing here takes place entirely underground. It was 9 o’clock in the morning at Cook County Jail, but in the subterranean holding cells where dozens await their turn before a judge, you wouldn't be able to tell.
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