Woman needing mental assessment spends two weeks in police cells, prison

From a Globe and Mail article:

Declared unfit to stand trial on minor charges, a middle-aged woman sent for a psychiatric assessment spent two weeks in police lockup and prison cells before being admitted to a mental health facility on Tuesday.

Her case, police say, is sadly typical of how the legal and mental-health systems are failing and jailing the mentally ill. A chronic shortage of space in the mental-health system has prompted judges in Ontario to use legal force to push patients on facilities with nowhere to house them. Increasingly, the care of the mentally ill is being forced on police and jailers.