DETROIT — There are Detroit homeless who would rather be in jail than a shelter or on the streets.

The couple-inch thick cots, thin blankets, mediocre meals, access to medical doctors, nurses and mental health beckon some of the most destitute.

Their other options include cramped shelters or shivering in doorways, beneath bushes or inside cars.

Jeriel Heard, chief of jails for Wayne County, spoke about these "voluntary prisoners" to the New York Times in 2009 when the foreclosure crisis began taking its toll on Metro Detroit. Three years later, the phenomenon persists.

On Dec. 4, Hazel Park police say Adam Powell, 33, of Detroit threw stones at police vehicles because they refused to let him bunk up in their jail.

Powell, who is homeless, hours earlier crashed his Honda — the vehicle doubled as his sleeping quarters — into the rear end of another vehicle, causing severe damage to his front end.

He was driving illegally, police said, with a suspended license and no insurance. The car was impounded.

"He felt it was the police department's responsibility to take care of him now that his car was gone and he needed a place to stay," Hazel Park Police Chief Martin Barner told the Macomb Daily Tribune. "We directed him to the nearest homeless shelter, but apparently he didn't like that information and decided to get himself arrested."

Powell instead began pelting police cruisers with rocks leading to his arrest for malicious destruction of police property, a four-year felony, and acquired the lodging he initially desired.

Heard said acts like this are not uncommon in large urban environments. Homeless will smash bottles against walls within sight of police, maybe cause minor property damage to get arrested, but they're not engaging in violence or significant theft, he said, just enough to get put behind bars.

Heard calls them "frequent fliers."

"When there's inclement weather or whenever the circumstances arise that our homeless population reach a point where they feel the need... they’ll commit mostly disorderly acts to get arrested," he said. "I've had inmates actually plead with me not to be released early. They say, 'Out there, I won't get any care.'

"It happens all the time, every day in Wayne County."

Heard said it's become an unintentional role of the jail to take in the destitute, usually drug- and alcohol-addicted or suffering from severe mental illness, and act as a liaison with social services to place the inmates in halfway houses, treatment centers or connect them with medical or mental health resources.

"I think its a dereliction of duty just to force a person you know who is a mental health consumer onto the street without support," said Heard. "That's bad public policy.

"The judges have told me to my face, 'Chief Heard, we send the mental health folks to the jail for you to figure out what to do them.'"

The result is an "unintended" use of the jail system resulting because of "policies that have weakened support systems," according to Heard, such a public mental health.

Nearly 30 percent of the homeless jailed in Wayne County have mental illness, according to the jail director.

"400 of our inmates are on some psychotropic medication," he said. "Our nurses pass out 1,800 doses of psychotropic medication every day."

At a $145-per-night cost to taxpayers, Heard said jail is not the most efficient means of treating the ailments that motivates these "voluntary inmates."

In some cities, Heard said, there are specialized crisis response teams who coordinate with police to assess the needs of disruptive homeless on the streets.

They immediately link them with public resources, before they end up behind bars.

There are jail beds set aside for these petty criminals grasping for help and shelter.

Currently the Wayne County Jail System, rated for 2,951 prisoners, has about 500 available beds.

Heard said it usually takes about 3 to 5 days to coordinate resources for these "frequent fliers" and send them back into the world.

Faith Fowler, the executive director for Cass Community Social Services, said she's seen homeless "set themselves up to go back" to jail.

"When you feel like you don't have many alternatives... sometimes your choices are between bad choices,"said Fowler, whose organization shelters 285 people per night. "A shelter isn't the best thing. Even good shelters are not the best places because you have a large number of people in crisis."

It can come down to a matter of dignity. In some cases, those in need perceive jail as a more dignified choice than a shelter, due to the stigma associated with shelters.

Others prefer going back to a structured jail, rather than a chaotic shelter, "because they know it,' said Fowler. "It's like putting on an old pair of jeans.

"Most of the people who are hitting cars with rocks to go to jail aren't doing so for the first time. It's a comfortable venue for them."

Fowler echoed Heard's sentiments regarding a lack of mental health care.

She said it's not so much that the resources aren't out there, but the difficulty of getting those in need to use them.

Her organization sends teams into the streets to speak with the mentally ill, an effort she said has had modest success, convincing 30 people in the last year to sign up for mental health assistance.

But "if you're mentally ill, you don't believe your mentally ill," she said. "To expect them to come in like we go into a grocery store isn’t going to work most of the time."