Bexar County opened an expanded facility on the South Side on Thursday to provide behavioral health and substance abuse treatment to people on probation.
The Applewhite Recovery Center will add more than 200 beds for probationers who suffer from mental illness and addiction. It’s part of an effort to reduce overcrowding at the Bexar County jail and bolster mental health services for across the county.
“In the state of Texas, our jails are the number one providers of mental health services,” Precinct 1 Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores said. “So it’s like we wait for young people to make a mistake, we throw them in jail to rot, because people are rotting in jail because we don’t have enough facilities like this to get them out.”…