Just a few days before she was taken to the Kenosha County Jail in October 2001, Molly Muhlenbeck was involved in a motor vehicle accident that damaged part of her spine and left her in intense pain.

Her family doctor gave her Percocet, a painkiller. After a few days in jail, however, the jail doctor stopped her medication. Instead she received ibuprofen and Tylenol.

It was not enough, she said. The pain was excruciating.

``I don't think they should have gone that far,'' said Muhlenbeck, 19, who was discharged from the jail last November. ``The doctor was playing God in there.''

Muhlenbeck's complaint is one of several that local defense attorneys heard immediately after a corrections health-care company based in Peoria, Ill., began administering health care to inmates at the jail and Kenosha County Detention Center in September 2001.

Other complaints: A diabetic did not get his insulin pump and his sugar levels became dangerously high. Still another who was not on his psychotropic drugs -- medication for the brain and nervous system -- was found unfit for court.

Dr. Norman Johnson, who was not yet working in Kenosha at the time, said he was skeptical of the validity of the initial patient complaints, and explained some of them:

Muhlenbeck was on a high dose of Percocet, an addictive drug.

``There are other methods of handling pain,'' Johnson said. ``Doctors as a rule don't start on high doses.''

Johnson said he tries to avoid the use of narcotics for inmates in chronic pain, explaining that inmates often sell the drugs to others who get high off them.

``There's various problems with narcotics in jail,'' Johnson said.

A diabetic inmate whose blood sugar rose dramatically was extremely non-compliant, according to Johnson, and was ordering hundreds of dollars worth of junk food from the commissary list. When the nurses found out, they had to restrict what he ordered. Also, Johnson said, the jail does not use a diabetes pump, preferring instead to control blood sugar by other means.

What about the man who was found unfit for court because he did not receive his psychotropic medication?

Johnson said it is hard to know if the inmate should be on psychotropics. He said the jail typically will withhold medication to observe the patient. Sometimes that could mean the person could be found unfit in the courtroom in the interim, he said.

``We do have to do a lot of detective work when it comes to psychotropic drugs,'' he said.

Johnson said if a psychiatric facility, like the state's Mendota Mental Institute, puts a patient on such medications, the jail will continue them. Also, if a prison prescribes a certain medication, the jail most likely will continue it.

``It's our job to make sure that those who need it actually get it,'' Johnson said.

Johnson believes the real issue is not the inmates who complain but the amount of overmedicated people in the jails.

``The real issue is we need to alert the doctors there are a lot of people in the area who do abuse prescription drugs,'' he said.

And doctors are not the only enablers. Mothers and lawyers are also to blame for supporting people in their bad habits, he said.

``What we need to do is alert everybody and work as a team to help people,'' Johnson said.