Too often, mentally ill defendants find that cracks in the criminal justice system lead straight to jail or prison, Deborah Grohs said. She noticed it as a public defender, and then as a 4th Judicial District Court judge.
"The jails became the mental health institutions," Grohs said. But on Tuesday, she handed one such defendant a diploma rather than a prison sentence. Grohs' mental health court celebrated its first graduate Tuesday, two years after the program began accepting applications from potential clients.
[For more of this story, written by Jakob Rodgers, go to http://gazette.com/mental-health-court-produces-first-graduate/article/1534691]
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