As inmate suicides spike, troubling questions raised about handling of mentally ill in nation's local jails

As inmate suicides spike, troubling questions raised about handling of mentally ill in nation's local jails
Associated Press and Capital News Service by Sharon Cohen and Nora Eckert
6/18/19

The last time Tanna Jo Fillmore talked with her mother, she was in a Utah jail, angry, pleading and desperate. She'd called every day that past week, begging for help.

I need my medicine, she demanded.

I have to get out of here! she screamed.

Fillmore was in the Duchesne County Jail on a charge of violating probation in a drug case; she had reportedly failed to report a change of address. At 25, she'd struggled with mental illness for years, but Xanax and hyperactivity medication had stabilized her. Now, she told her mother, the jail's nurse was denying her those pills — and she couldn't take it any longer.

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