NPR is currently broadcasting a three-part series on prisons in America called "Who's behind bars?" Their second part focuses on the Los Angeles jail that functions as the nation's largest mental institution.
The largest mental institution in the country is actually a wing of a county jail. Known as Twin Towers, because of the design, the facility houses 1,400 mentally ill patients in one of its two identical hulking structures in downtown Los Angeles.
On a recent morning, we took a visit to the floor devoted to the "sickest of the sick." As we arrived, a dozen deputies were working to restrain a patient and inject him with an anti-psychotic drug. The entire ordeal was videotaped — to protect the patient as well as the deputies. It was the first hint at the complexities that emerge from creating a mental hospital inside a jail.
Until the 1970s, the mentally ill were usually treated in public psychiatric hospitals, more commonly known as insane asylums.
Then, a social movement aimed at freeing patients from big, overcrowded and often squalid state hospitals succeeded. Rather than leading to quality treatment in small, community settings, however, it often resulted in no treatment at all.
As a consequence, thousands of mentally ill ended up on the streets, where they became involved in criminal activity. Their crimes, though frequently minor, led them in droves to jails such as Twin Towers, says Los Angeles County
Sheriff Lee Baca.
"Incarcerating the mentally ill is not the right thing to do," he says.
But if they are housed in Twin Towers, Baca says he is determined to make sure they are treated for illness.
Dr. Arakel Davtian, one of the psychiatrists sitting in this large circle, takes a moment to explain just who they are dealing with; about half those locked up at the Twin Towers are in for serious crimes, he says.
What he finds striking, however, is how little it takes for the other half to end up there: "Indecent exposure, having open containers, something very, very minor — peeing on the street, disturbing the peace."
Often, the crimes these people commit are the result of their mental illness, Davtian says.
NPR is currently broadcasting a three-part series on prisons in America called "Who's behind bars?" Their second part focuses on the Los Angeles jail that functions as the nation's largest mental institution.
