Judge McCune

When Marion County Judge Jim McCune was appointed to the bench in early 2002, he was almost instantly introduced to the need for greater substance and mental-health resources for the defendants before his court.

“My first week on the bench, we had about 30 defendants in my courtroom,” McCune said. “Over time, I would see a lot of the same people here repeatedly. They’d be called frequent flyers, and they would all have substance or mental-health issues. I wasn’t a psychology major, but I kept asking myself, what is going on here?”