Megan Jolly should not be sitting in a jail cell, untreated, forgotten, and slipping further away from the life she once built.

She’s not a violent criminal—she’s a 52-year-old woman with a mental illness, accused of minor offenses after spiraling without care. Megan has already been declared incompetent to stand trial, yet she remains in the St. Charles County jail, waiting for treatment that may not come for months. Her story is heartbreaking, but she is not alone. Nearly 500 Missourians are stuck in legal limbo, many in county jails unequipped to meet their needs. Some have died waiting.

This is not justice. It’s cruelty masquerading as procedure.

The system is so overwhelmed that people accused of low-level misdemeanors now wait over a year just for a bed in a psychiatric facility. This crisis is the direct result of chronic underfunding, poor planning, and bureaucratic inertia. Meanwhile, jails are forced to warehouse people with serious mental illness—at enormous cost to taxpayers and devastating human consequence.

We call on Governor Mike Parson, the Missouri Department of Mental Health, and the Missouri General Assembly to immediately:

1. Transfer Megan Jolly to a mental health treatment facility
2. Expand inpatient bed capacity and outpatient programs for those deemed incompetent to stand trial
3. Fully fund and implement the mobile forensic teams and jail-based restoration programs already approved
4. Stop jailing people with mental illness for longer than their potential sentences

This is not a partisan issue—it’s a human one. Whether you care about civil rights, fiscal responsibility, or basic decency, the current system is failing all of us.

Megan deserves treatment, not indefinite incarceration. And Missouri deserves a mental health system that works.

Sign now to demand justice for Megan Jolly and hundreds like her.