Johnny suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, for which he receives treatment from some of the best professionals in the Los Angeles Mental Health Department. The problem is that Johnny isn’t being treated in a hospital but in L.A.’s Twin Towers jail, America’s largest mental health institution—by default, not design. It’s a national crisis, and one that L.A.’s Sheriff Lee Baca calls “immoral.”
An earlier version of this story first aired May 20, 2004.
- “Arrested, with a mental illness, what you need to know,” Los Angeles County Sherrif’s Department
- U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness, Human Rights Watch
- The Mental Health Services Expansion and Funding initiative, official campaign site for this November 2004, ballot measure
- MHA Village, Integrated services mental health facility, Long Beach, California
- National Alliance on Mental Illness, California chapter, political advocacy group
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