Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley had written extensively about the criminal justice system. But it
was only when his own son-in the throes of a manic episode-broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens
to mentally ill people who break a law.
This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands
who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the "revolving doors"
between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless
or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience-and
into that of a father and award-winning journalist trying to fight for a better way.