Phillip Cho is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Cho tells L.A. Weekly that, upon arriving at the prison facility on Bauchet Street, deputies made him walk through a spray of Mace as they mocked, "Welcome to Twin Towers." (The Sheriff's Department says it has no complaints on file about the alleged incident. Cho was not taking his medications but is adamant that it happened.)
Inside, Cho's mental health worsened, a common outcome cited by jail critics. All too often, unstable people become even more unstable inside L.A.'s jail system. And that makes them more likely to repeat crimes or grow violent, sometimes trapping them for years in a punitive system ill-equipped to provide the treatment they need to change.
It needn't be like this. Miami, Nashville and San Francisco have shown a way out of this cycle. They "divert" nonviolent, mentally ill offenders into more humane community treatment centers, which provide housing, medication, job counseling and therapy. Their programs are better than jails at preventing crime and at keeping troubled people from re-offending.
[For more of this story, written by Chris Walker, go to http://www.laweekly.com/2014-0...nt-for-mentally-ill/]
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