Stuck in a ‘Fractured’ System

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2024

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Working as a health care reporter in North Carolina, WFAE’s Dana Miller Ervin heard about jail inmates living with serious mental illnesses who cycled for years between jails and psychiatric hospitals. The courts deem them too sick to stand trial – incapable to proceed or ITP – but they often wait months to get the care they need just so their cases can move forward.

Ervin detailed her investigation in an 11-part WFAE radio series, “Fractured,” made with support from FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative. Now, a documentary by the same name follows Ervin as she chronicles the plight of ITP inmates. Fractured is directed by Débora Souza Silva, a 2023 recipient of the FRONTLINE/Firelight Media Investigative Journalism Fellowship.

Ervin and Silva joined Raney Aronson-Rath on The FRONTLINE Dispatch to discuss making the film; how long waits for care affect these defendants as well as others in the criminal justice system; and potential solutions to the problem.

The “Fractured” documentary is streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, YouTube, and the PBS App.

Read and listen to more from WFAE and FRONTLINE’s series Fractured.

Transcript

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0:00.0	For two years, reported Dana Miller-Eervyn has been investigating the mental health care
0:06.8	system in North Carolina.
0:08.8	What she found was ultimately a broken system. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the state's treatment of jail inmates living with severe mental illness.
0:19.0	What are they telling you about why you've been here so long?
0:21.0	I'm not getting any information.
0:22.9	Inmates, she were too sick to stand trial
0:25.0	can spend months in jail waiting for space
0:27.8	in the state's strained psychiatric hospitals.
0:30.7	I think he's being held beyond a reasonable amount of time.
0:34.0	They're not getting the help that they need on the outside.
0:37.0	Frackert is a new film streaming online.
0:40.0	It's also an 11-part radio series from WFA in North Carolina, produced with support
0:46.5	from Frontline's Local Journalism Initiative.
0:49.6	I spoke with Dana Miller-E from WFA and the film's director,
0:54.4	Deborah Sols a Silva, about their work on Fraction.
0:58.0	I'm Rain Eerenson Roth, editor-in-chief and Executive Producer of Frontline.
1:03.2	And this is the Frontline Dispatch.
1:10.4	The Frontline Dispatch is made possible
1:12.4	by the Abrams Foundation
1:13.8	committed to excellence in journalism and by the Frontline Journalism Fund
1:18.2	with major support from John and Joanne Hagler.
1:21.0	Support for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer
	...

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