Some Unprovoked Chicago Killings Linked To Poor Mental Health Care

Mark Heyrman spent more than four decades teaching about the mental health system as a University of Chicago Law School professor. The biggest problem he sees is that no single entity in Illinois coordinates care.

The Chicago Sun-Times, in an investigation of unprovoked killings in the city, asked Heyrman why suspects in these cases seem to have fallen through Illinois’ safety net of treatment. “If you failed in the previous discharge plan, we should say, ‘Why did you fail?’ And usually it’s not ‘you failed,’ but ‘we failed you, we didn’t give you enough services,’ ” says Heyrman, With no entity overseeing the mental health care system in Chicago, homeless patients discharged from private hospitals might be given a bottle of medication and told to follow up at a clinic without what experts say should be a “warm handoff” to a treatment provider.

Even though people experiencing homelessness and severe mental illness are more likely to become victims than perpetrators of crime, a small but visible number of them repeatedly cycles through the criminal justice system. People with mental illness who are found guilty of crimes in Illinois are often left rudderless when they leave prison. Or, if they are granted probation on the condition they get treatment, they might find treatment options scarce. Those whose criminal cases are dismissed before trial often leave jail with no treatment plan. Heyrman and other experts say the holes in the safety net for mentally ill people need to be addressed by federal, state and local officials. With only 1,200 state psychiatric beds in Illinois, he says more funding for community mental health would allow people who don’t need 24/7 hospitalization to leave state mental hospitals — meaning hospital spots could go to people in greater need. Illinois spent an average of $49,271 on each person in prison in 2024, far more expensive than the cost of so-called wraparound services to keep people in treatment. The two biggest Chicago social service providers pegged these services at $15,000 to $35,000 per client per year, depending on the person’s needs — which is as much as 70% less expensive than incarceration.