BREAKDOWN was a set of Star Tribune stories examining failures in Minnesota’s public mental health system that have left thousands of psychiatric patients languishing in county jails or discharged without proper care – often with dangerous or deadly results. Four stories were formal, heavily-investigated installments of the series; four others were spot stories written off news related to the core premise. Among our findings: ***Fully 25 percent of the inmates in Minnesota’s largest county jail in any given month suffer from diagnosed psychiatric disorders – many stalled there because of lapses in state psychiatric care and many posing a risk to themselves or others. Few receive proper psychiatric care and dozens have shown documented deterioration while in jail. ***These inmates are often confined for months at a stretch because of backlogs in the court commitment system – far longer than offenders arrested for comparable infractions – even though many are never convicted of a crime. ***More than 60 mentally ill inmates have committed suicide in county jails and state prisons since 2000 – many of them with psychiatric disorders that were known to authorities when they were arrested, and many under circumstances that were foreseeable or preventable. ***In several cases, sheriff’s deputies and jail staff falsified documents or altered jail records to cover up negligence that led to inmate injuries and suicides.
