Mainstream coverage of Michigan’s mental health crisis in county jails is long overdue. For decades, advocates and families have sounded the alarm: our jails have become de facto psychiatric facilities, overflowing with people who need treatment, not punishment.
But while recent reporting acknowledges the “revolving door” and the “behavioral health crisis” behind bars, it leaves out some of the most crucial — and damning — parts of the story. And until those pieces are exposed, Michigan will keep recycling the same failures under a different headline.
“Support” on Paper Isn’t Support in Reality
Van Buren County Sheriff Dan Abbott told reporters that their jail provides “mental health support” to roughly 25% of inmates. That statistic sounds good in a press release, but the lived experience of those behind bars tells a different story entirely.
Here’s what real people are saying: they go days without medical attention for visible injuries. They aren’t even asked about their mental health medications until after they’ve been released from holding. They’re ignored when they request care, dismissed when they ask for help, and treated like problems to contain instead of people in crisis.
Calling that “support” isn’t just misleading; it’s insulting.
The Revolving Door Exists Because There’s No Door Out
Sheriff Dan Abbott calls it “a revolving door”: people in crisis commit crimes, get arrested, cycle through the system, and wind up right back where they started.
But what Abbott and too many officials like him absolutely fail to say is why that revolving door exists: because Michigan’s mental health infrastructure is barely functional.
Psychiatric hospital beds have been slashed over the past decades. Community-based mental health programs are underfunded and understaffed. Jail staff are not trained or equipped to provide clinical care, yet they’re expected to do it anyway.
The result is a self-perpetuating cycle: people in crisis are criminalized, jailed, neglected, released without treatment, and then re-arrested for predictable relapses. The system isn’t broken; it’s designed this way.
One could even argue that this is negligence on the part of the state or county; to recognize the need and outright ignore it.
Mental Health Care Is a Constitutional Obligation — and Michigan Is Failing It
It’s important to remember: people in custody have a constitutional right to adequate medical and mental health care. That right doesn’t disappear because someone is incarcerated. But when untreated injuries are ignored, medication is withheld, or mental illness is met with punishment instead of therapy, that’s more than a policy failure, it’s a violation of civil rights.
And yet, this is the norm across Michigan jails, not the exception. Many facilities don’t have full-time mental health staff. Most don’t provide trauma-informed care. Few offer any kind of continuity between incarceration and community treatment. And nearly all are operating on budgets that prioritize surveillance and security over wellness and rehabilitation.
Silence Protects Systems — Stories Expose Them
For every official statistic about “mental health support,” there are hundreds of untold stories; people with untreated wounds, unmedicated illnesses, and unaddressed trauma who leave jail worse off than when they entered.
That’s why those stories matter. They’re the reality behind the sanitized language of “support” and “services.” And they’re the evidence that what’s happening in Michigan isn’t a revolving door; it’s a trap.
