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This year, I was honored to serve as a screener for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. The grand-prize winning story for the RFK Awards this year clearly has local implications. The story is as close as your county jail.

Currently, fewer than 55,000 Americans live in mental hospitals, but 10 times that many mentally ill people are serving time in prisons and jails. PBS's "Frontline" produced the award-winning project, which is worth your time. You can watch the entire program online.

You can click on this page and see state-by-state statistics and find contact information to localize the story. "Frontline" says:

Of the nearly 2 million inmates being held in prisons and jails across the country, experts believe nearly 500,000 are mentally ill. According to the National Alliance [on Mental Illness] (NAMI), 16 percent of the prison population can be classified as severely mentally ill, meaning that they fit the psychiatric classification for illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression and bipolar disorder. According to staff at city and community jails, 25 percent of the jail population is severely mentally ill. However, when other mental illnesses, such as anti-social personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and depression, are included, the numbers are much higher, and NAMI puts the number of inmates suffering from both mental illness and substance abuse the percentage at well over 50 percent.

Look at this small passage to get a taste of the larger problems:

Eventually, a majority of mentally ill inmates are released back into the community, generally with a limited amount of medication, little preparation, and sometimes no family or support structure. "We release people with two weeks' worth of medication. Yet it appears that it's taking three months for people to actually get an appointment in the community to continue their services… and if they don't have the energy and/or the insight to do that, they're going to fall through the cracks and end up back in some kind of criminal activity," warns Debbie Nixon-Hughes, chief of the mental health bureau of the Ohio Department of Corrections.

Here are some more resources, to help you go deeper on this topic.

Human Rights Watch issued a warning in 2003 about how ill-equipped jails and prisons are to handle the mentally ill. The U.S. director of that group said then, "Prisons have become the nation's primary mental health facilities. But for those with serious mental illnesses, prisons can be the worst place to be."

Back in 1999, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees raised concerns about how little training some employees were getting while still being asked to care for the mentally ill.

Last week, The Hartford (Conn.) Courant reported that Connecticut's prison system now houses fewer inmates than it has in recent years -- but the percentage of those inmates who are mentally ill has jumped. One in five Connecticut inmates is mentally ill, the paper says.

Girls Get Soccer Scholarships

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution zeroes in on a national trend of girls netting big-time scholarships for soccer. In part, this is Title IX at play -- schools have to offer the same number of scholarships to women athletes as men, and soccer is where schools are placing their money.  Go to soccerbuzz.com for tons of information about women's soccer, including the names and schools of the top recruits around the nation.  

Wounded and In Debt

The U.S. Government Accountability Office [PDF] says hundreds of soldiers are running up giant military debt because of the government's cumbersome pay system.

The report says an additional 400 who died in the wars had $300,000 in debt -- but that the Defense Department does not try to collect money from the estates of people killed in combat.

The report found:

As of September 30, 2005, nearly 1,300 separated Army GWOT [Global War on Terrorism] soldiers who were injured or killed during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan had incurred over $1.5 million in military debt, including almost 900 battle-injured soldiers with debts of $1.2 million and about 400 soldiers who died in combat with debts of $300,000. As a policy, [the Department of Defense] does not pursue collection of debts of soldiers who were killed in combat. However, hundreds of battle-injured soldiers experienced collection action on their debts. The extent of these debts may be greater due to incomplete reporting. GAO's case studies of 19 battle-injured soldiers showed that collection action on military debts resulted in significant hardships to these soldiers and their families. For example, 16 of the 19 soldiers were unable to pay their basic household expenses; four soldiers were unable to obtain loans to purchase a car or house or meet other needs; and eight soldiers' debts were offset against their income tax refunds. In addition, 16 of the 19 case study soldiers had their debts reported to credit bureaus and nine soldiers were contacted by private collection agencies.

The case studies included in the GAO report tell the story of an Army Reserve staff sergeant who lost his right leg below the knee. This soldier "spent 1-1/2 years on disputes and appeals before multiple debts and errors were resolved." The report adds, "The Army debt, the only blot on the soldier's credit report, prevented him from obtaining a loan to purchase a house."

• Then there was the case of another staff sergeant, this one in the National Guard, who had suffered brain damage and post-traumatic stress. The case study said that "the failure to record this soldier's separation in the pay system resulted in forfeiture of three month's pay while the Army attempted to recover his debt. As a result, the soldier's utilities were turned off and his family was separated.

• Another, an active Army staff sergeant who is paralyzed from the waist down, "received a reduced paycheck or no net pay during the last four months he was in the Army. He separated from the Army in January 2005 and his debt was not resolved until February 2006," the study says.
  

• Yet another, an Army Reserve specialist who had inoperable shrapnel in knee, "was erroneously listed as absent without leave (AWOL) when she was actually being treated for her war injury. The AWOL error caused a pay-related debt. The soldier was unable to get a $500 loan to pay off her credit card balance due to Army debt on her credit report."
  

Single Senior Guys-Hard to Find

The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times ran an interesting piece last week about the life of a single senior guy. He finds himself outnumbered -- three to one -- by senior women, and seems to be having a genuinely fine time. What an interesting story of our times, as people live longer.

The story included this passage:

More and more older people get divorces nowadays. In 1960, only 1.6 percent of men and 1.5 percent of women age 65 and older were divorced; but by 2003, 7 percent of older men and 8.6 percent of older women were divorced and had not remarried.

"And a lot of the women don't remarry, so there are a lot more unmarried women at that age spectrum than men," said Thomas F. Coleman, executive director of Unmarried America, an education and advocacy organization for single people.

Sara Kanstoroom of Tarpon Springs, a widow of four years who was married for 40 years, averages three dates a week. She is a member of four different Pinellas County singles groups and also gets together with a group of about 10 single girlfriends aged 60 to 65.

"They're looking for Mr. Right," she said. "I'm looking for Mr. Fun."

Experts say this explains why older women tend to be happier single than older men. They are better at setting up a social network and a support system.

"I think women have more resources to live single," said E. Kay Trimberger, author of "The New Single Woman." "They have a network of family and friends that provide intimacy and support and fun. They're not isolated."

Many older men, not as adept at creating social networks, can find themselves alone and unhappy.