CLEVELAND, Ohio — America’s jails and prisons have long been a frontline in the country’s struggle with mental illness and addiction. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of people behind bars are battling both.
More than half of inmates across the country met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse between 2007 and 2009, a U.S. Department of Justice bureau found. Another study sponsored by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates that about 42% of people in state and federal prisons meet the criteria for at least one major mental disorder.
For those defendants in Cuyahoga County, Mental Health Adult Drug Court is one of only two programs in the state that simultaneously treats drug abuse and mental health together on a specialty docket…