Frank Main

1 week ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Frank Main |Stephanie Zimmermann

Mark Heyrman spent more than four decades teaching about the mental health system as a University of Chicago Law School professor. He says the biggest problem he sees is this: No single entity in Illinois coordinates care. The Chicago Sun-Times, as part of an investigation into the circumstances behind random attacks downtown involving suspects with histories of severe mental illness, asked Heyrman why these people seem to have fallen through Illinois’ safety net of treatment.

1 week ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Frank Main |Stephanie Zimmermann

Mauro Galvan’s family panicked when he didn’t come home. On a warm day last October, Galvan was released from the state’s Elgin Mental Health Center, where he was being treated since being found not guilty by reason of insanity in an attack on a nurse in 2019. He was supposed to be delivered to his brother, with whom he was planning to live. But his brother, who works in construction and couldn’t leave his jobsite, coudn’t keep his appointment to pick him up.

2 weeks ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Frank Main |Stephanie Zimmermann

Corneal Westbrooks lowers the collar on his white T-shirt and exposes a tattoo. It reads: “Genesis 4:9.”That’s the Bible passage in which Cain asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”Westbrooks says one of his missions in life was to watch out for his younger brother Jawaun, who’s had bipolar depression and schizophrenia since his teens. Corneal and his mother were safe harbors for Jawaun, providing food and a roof over his head.

2 weeks ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Stephanie Zimmermann |Frank Main

Anat Kimchi was studying the criminal justice system because she thought she could help make it fairer. Kimchi, 31, a University of Maryland grad student, wanted to figure out which nonviolent offenders were the most likely to abide by the conditions of their early release from prison and which were likeliest to fail — and why. Her work was ambitious and heavy on data analysis. So, in June 2021, she took a break and came to Chicago to visit a friend.

2 weeks ago | chicago.suntimes.com | Stephanie Zimmermann |Frank Main

June 29, 2023, and Henry Graham, a lost soul in one of America’s wealthiest neighborhoods, was strolling Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Again. For years, Graham had ricocheted back and forth among Chicago, Evanston and South Bend, Indiana. He’d bounce from homeless shelters to jails, prisons and hospitals, the troubles in his head never fully addressed. On a good day, he’d walk in to St. James Episcopal Cathedral near Huron Street and Wabash Avenue for some free food and a little camaraderie.