But after the Wilts applied for their son to enter a group home in York County, they faced a problem they didn’t expect: they were told he would be waiting for more than five months.
Only a month after joining the waiting list, despite the couple’s attempt to supervise their son as best they could, Jared Christopher Winters was arrested. Today he remains in jail; he’s one of the estimated 4,000 inmates in Pennsylvania’s county prison system, or 11 percent of the total, who are seriously mentally ill.