At least three times as many mentally ill people are in jail as are in hospitals. Nearly 300,000 people with mental illnesses are in jail in the United States, most convicted of crimes they would not have committed if they had been treated; another 550,000 are on probation. Few are in for violent crimes; most are there for the myriad small transgressions that are inevitable for people impervious to social reality. They are dealt with not by doctors, but by police officers—and then prison guards and other criminals.
