Mecklenburg County opens NC’s first jail psych unit

The bottom half of a small basketball court is covered by cheerful yellow paint and speckled with marker doodles of smiling stick figures, flowers and sets of two humps to indicate birds in a sunny sky. That yellow matches stripes on the linoleum floor in the main area set off by columns in cheerful pastels. Numbered doors with small windows lead to residents’ small rooms.

The jail psychiatric unit in downtown Charlotte — known as “McP” — looks like a school, but it’s actually North Carolina’s first behavioral health unit located in a county jail. Inmates, or residents as the sheriff calls them, take daily medications, attend group classes, and participate in therapy with the aim of getting better before returning to the general population in the Mecklenburg County Central Detention Center or being released to the outside world.