Al Tompkins, the reliable story-spotter at the Poynter Institute, jumped at the potential to localize a New York Times story on how cash-strapped mental health systems are allowing young offenders with psychiatric disorders to be handled by the juvenile justice system instead of by mental health specialists.
According to The New York Times, which refers to the current situation as a “crisis,” two-thirds of the nation’s approximately 92,000 juvenile inmates suffer from at least one mental illness while at least 32 states are slashing the budgets of their mental health programs.
