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Alabama promised to improve psychiatric care for men charged with crimes. They still wait years
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A framed photo of Fernando Clark, who died in Montgomery County Jail in 2024, sits in the living room of his sister's home in Montgomery, Ala., Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025. - photo by AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Fernando Clark spent the last 10 months of his life in a jail cell, waiting for psychiatric treatment a court ordered he undergo after he'd been arrested for stealing cigarettes and some fruit from a gas station. He died while waiting for the treatment that never arrived, found unresponsive in his jail cell. Clark was just one of hundreds of people across Alabama awaiting a spot in the state's increasingly limited facilities, despite a consent decree requiring the state to address delays in evaluating and providing care for people suffering from mental illness who are charged with crimes.