Some Illinois Sheriff's Departments are taking part in a pilot program that gets detainees found unfit for trial the help they need while they're in jail and awaiting placement in institutions.
On any given day, there are reported to be about 200 jail detainees found unfit to stand trial awaiting placement by the Illinois Department of Human Services.
They can wait for a long time, according to Jim Kaitschuk, Executive Director of the Illinois Sheriff's Association.
"Before we started working with them on the pilot, one of the challenges that we were running into is the fact that they just weren't taking people that were found unable to stand trial due to fitness, and they would languish in the jails for months," he said. "It becomes an increasingly big problem, especially for smaller jails."
The jails in Kankakee and McHenry Counties are taking detainees from smaller jails that aren't equipped to help them.
Local mental health providers under contract with DHS are working with the detainees.
"Even if they don't get them restored to fitness while they're in the jail they're getting services that will make it easier and thus move beds quicker once they are transferred to a DHS facility so that they can go back and stand trial," Kaitschuk said.
"We're not mental health facilities, but we were housing individuals who really needed that level of care," said Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey. "Once they start medication and have access to care, they become much more manageable."
They've seen detainees restored to fitness faster.
"Unfortunately, the population continues to grow of those people that are facing mental health challenges," Kaitschuk added, "and we become the default. That's unfortunate for a variety of reasons. We want to get people the help that they need."
Ten years ago, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart hired a psychologist as the jail director.
That was at a time when he said the jail was the largest mental health institution in the country.