A Psychologist as Warden? Jail and Mental Illness Intersect in Chicago
CHICAGO — Nneka Jones Tapia, who runs the sprawling Cook County Jail here, has an indelible childhood memory of police officers pounding on the aluminum walls of the family’s double-wide trailer home in North Carolina, riffling through cupboards and drawers, and arresting her father on charges of selling marijuana.
Dr. Jones Tapia, then 8, had to call her mother home from work.
Over the next several years, other relatives, including two brothers, and a number of friends also spent time in jail. She says she might have ended up there, too.
Instead, she became fascinated by psychology and earned a doctorate. She began working at Cook County Jail in 2006, and this spring became its unlikely warden when she was promoted to executive director — one of the first clinical psychologists to run a jail, underscoring how much the country’s prisons have become holding centers for the mentally ill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/us/a-psychologist-as-warden-jail-and-mental-illness-intersect-in-chicago.html?ref=topics&_r=0