No Exit
The nation's mentally ill used to be locked in asylums. Now they're stowed in prisons.
By Sasha Abramsky and Jamie Fellner


Fifty years ago, more than half a million mentally ill Americans lived in state-run mental hospitals like the one depicted so searingly in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Today, laws protect the mentally ill from needless involuntary stays. As a result, fewer than 80,000 people now live in such institutions.