Psychologist to head Cook County Jail
A 37-year-old clinical psychologist will head the Cook County Jail, the massive West Side complex that county officials have long said effectively serves as the state’s largest mental hospital.
Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia has been first assistant executive director running the jail’s four divisions that house mentally ill inmates since she was hired by Sheriff Tom Dart in 2013.
While the jail’s total population has dropped — thanks in part to better evaluation of new defendants by pretrial services and more frequent use of electronic monitoring — its percentage of mentally ill inmates has not, according to Jones Tapia.
Currently, out of the approximately 8,000 detainees, some 1,900 have been identified as mentally ill, nearly a fourth of the jail, she said.
Like predecessor Cara Smith, who the office said is being promoted into a newly created position as chief strategist, Jones Tapia said the problems can’t be solved by the jail alone.
“It’s a social epidemic that I think psychology can help put a light on,” Jones Tapia said Monday in an interview in her current office in the jail’s mental health transition center across the street from the main jail compound. “Not to take anything away from my correctional partners, but when we have tunnel vision, sometimes we miss certain aspects.”
Jones Tapia, who is married to a correctional officer at the jail and who is stepmother to three sons, said a priority will be to improve communications with jail staff. She plans to set up an “advisory council” made of correctional staff to help her make decisions and wants to work to improve “quality of life” for officers and inmates.
“I don’t think anyone is better prepared to tell us how to handle (problems) than the people who are on the front lines,” she said.
Another priority will be to end decades-long federal oversight of the jail. Last year a monitor found the jail to be in “substantial compliance” with a consent decree governing medical treatment and other issues, putting the jail on track to end the oversight by next year.
“I believe we’re pretty close,” Jones Tapia said.
One continuing issue at the jail is overcrowding at its hospital, known as Cermak Health Services, which is run by the county and is outside the sheriff’s control.
Jones Tapia, who interned there in 2006, met her future husband while both worked at the psych ward, and she later returned to take jobs as psychologist and chief psychologist. She said she hopes to “be a better liaison” between Cermak and those on the law enforcement side.
But like many in the sheriff’s office, she expressed frustration that the hospital is outside the control of the jail even though it is within its walls.
“It’s difficult when you might understand what you think needs to be done, but you don’t have control over doing it,” Jones Tapia said.
Jones Tapia said she grew up in North Carolina with some immediate family members who revolved in and out of the corrections system.
“I think that’s where my attraction to wanting to help the incarcerated population developed,” she said.
In addition to jail staff, Jones Tapia said she plans to try to build relationships with the judges who decide who winds up in jail awaiting trial or who goes home on bond or electronic monitoring.
“This job is 99.9 percent about the relationships you build,” she said. “I know I’m not in it alone.”
