JJT
06-24-2004, 08:56 AM
Aid sought for state, local prisons overwhelmed with mentally ill inmates
MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Associated PressWASHINGTON - When 52-year-old Joseph Spence hanged himself June 11 in the Bridgeport Correctional Center, he became the fifth Connecticut inmate to commit suicide in a little over two months.
Police officers in both Athens and Fayette, Ala., were shot to death this year by defendants who pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease. Two other mentally ill men wielding knives were shot dead by police in Mobile, Ala.
Law enforcement's interaction with the mentally ill has grown dramatically, with tragic results - not to mention considerable expense to state and local governments.
An estimated 16 percent of U.S. prison and jail inmates are mentally ill, compared with 5 percent of the general population.
The mentally ill are more expensive to incarcerate, stay behind bars longer and return more frequently than sane inmates.
A Justice Department study found nearly half the mentally ill inmates were imprisoned for nonviolent crimes.
Yet Pennsylvania spends $140 a day on inmates with serious mental illness, compared to $80 a day on average inmates.
Miami-Dade County, Fla., spends $4 million a year on overtime to manage mentally ill prisoners. "They have to be checked every 15 minutes," Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Steven Leifman explained in an interview.
"Often we have to put a guard right outside their door, not because they are dangerous but because they are suicidal," said Connecticut State Rep. Michael Lawlor, a Democrat and co-chair of the Council of State Governments criminal justice-mental health consensus project.
These advocates want Congress to step in, and the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act has drawn unusually bipartisan support.
Rarely do GOP Attorney General John Ashcroft and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., agree. Leahy co-sponsored the bill when it passed the Senate last year without dissent. And at a House Judiciary crime subcommittee hearing on the bill Tuesday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Cheri Nolan called the rise in mentally ill defendants and inmates "one of the most pressing issues facing our police departments, jails, prisons and courts."
The bill would provide $100 million each in 2004 and 2005 to states and localities that devise programs in which criminal justice agencies collaborate with mental health agencies.
"Our justice resources need to be dedicated to violent criminals and homeland security, not to low-level offenders with mental illness who could be better served in treatment, at significant savings to taxpayers," said state Sen. Robert Thompson, a Republican who chairs the Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee.
Judge Leifman said the problem is that "we've criminalized mental illness in this country."
In 1955, 560,000 people were in state psychiatric hospitals; fewer than 40,000 are today, he said. But 300,000-400,000 people with severe mental illness are now behind prison bars.
"We took the population from state hospitals, which were horrible, and put them in jails, which are even worse," he said.
In addition, state budget cuts shrank programs providing assistance to the mentally ill, Connecticut lawmaker Lawlor said. "Ironically, we've put the mentally ill in a prison system where you have to pay a lot more than in the older programs that were cut," he said.
Miami-Dade now has a pre-arrest and post-arrest diversion program involving police, prosecutors, judges, health care providers, corrections officials, public defenders and family members, Leifman said.
The city of Miami has trained 80 officers in Crisis Intervention Team policing where officers learn to identify mentally illness and de-escalate encounters.
These officers, who handled 3,600 calls last year, haven't fired a shot in any calls in 17 months, Leifman said.
The mentally ill are taken to crisis stabilization units, like psychiatric emergency rooms, or if arrested for a misdemeanor are transferred there within two days. Once stabilized, they are put into case management care.
Re-arrests for misdemeanors dropped from 72 percent in 2000 when the plan started to 16 percent this year, saving Miami-Dade over $2.5 million a year, Leifman said.
As many as 40 Ohio police departments had the same training, and Congress' $100 million could set up similar programs around the nation, advocates said.
"Congress sending a message would have enormous value for those not yet convinced," Ohio mental health director Mike Hogan said. "We've got the early adopters, but we need to bring along the majority now."
MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Associated PressWASHINGTON - When 52-year-old Joseph Spence hanged himself June 11 in the Bridgeport Correctional Center, he became the fifth Connecticut inmate to commit suicide in a little over two months.
Police officers in both Athens and Fayette, Ala., were shot to death this year by defendants who pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease. Two other mentally ill men wielding knives were shot dead by police in Mobile, Ala.
Law enforcement's interaction with the mentally ill has grown dramatically, with tragic results - not to mention considerable expense to state and local governments.
An estimated 16 percent of U.S. prison and jail inmates are mentally ill, compared with 5 percent of the general population.
The mentally ill are more expensive to incarcerate, stay behind bars longer and return more frequently than sane inmates.
A Justice Department study found nearly half the mentally ill inmates were imprisoned for nonviolent crimes.
Yet Pennsylvania spends $140 a day on inmates with serious mental illness, compared to $80 a day on average inmates.
Miami-Dade County, Fla., spends $4 million a year on overtime to manage mentally ill prisoners. "They have to be checked every 15 minutes," Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Steven Leifman explained in an interview.
"Often we have to put a guard right outside their door, not because they are dangerous but because they are suicidal," said Connecticut State Rep. Michael Lawlor, a Democrat and co-chair of the Council of State Governments criminal justice-mental health consensus project.
These advocates want Congress to step in, and the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act has drawn unusually bipartisan support.
Rarely do GOP Attorney General John Ashcroft and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., agree. Leahy co-sponsored the bill when it passed the Senate last year without dissent. And at a House Judiciary crime subcommittee hearing on the bill Tuesday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Cheri Nolan called the rise in mentally ill defendants and inmates "one of the most pressing issues facing our police departments, jails, prisons and courts."
The bill would provide $100 million each in 2004 and 2005 to states and localities that devise programs in which criminal justice agencies collaborate with mental health agencies.
"Our justice resources need to be dedicated to violent criminals and homeland security, not to low-level offenders with mental illness who could be better served in treatment, at significant savings to taxpayers," said state Sen. Robert Thompson, a Republican who chairs the Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee.
Judge Leifman said the problem is that "we've criminalized mental illness in this country."
In 1955, 560,000 people were in state psychiatric hospitals; fewer than 40,000 are today, he said. But 300,000-400,000 people with severe mental illness are now behind prison bars.
"We took the population from state hospitals, which were horrible, and put them in jails, which are even worse," he said.
In addition, state budget cuts shrank programs providing assistance to the mentally ill, Connecticut lawmaker Lawlor said. "Ironically, we've put the mentally ill in a prison system where you have to pay a lot more than in the older programs that were cut," he said.
Miami-Dade now has a pre-arrest and post-arrest diversion program involving police, prosecutors, judges, health care providers, corrections officials, public defenders and family members, Leifman said.
The city of Miami has trained 80 officers in Crisis Intervention Team policing where officers learn to identify mentally illness and de-escalate encounters.
These officers, who handled 3,600 calls last year, haven't fired a shot in any calls in 17 months, Leifman said.
The mentally ill are taken to crisis stabilization units, like psychiatric emergency rooms, or if arrested for a misdemeanor are transferred there within two days. Once stabilized, they are put into case management care.
Re-arrests for misdemeanors dropped from 72 percent in 2000 when the plan started to 16 percent this year, saving Miami-Dade over $2.5 million a year, Leifman said.
As many as 40 Ohio police departments had the same training, and Congress' $100 million could set up similar programs around the nation, advocates said.
"Congress sending a message would have enormous value for those not yet convinced," Ohio mental health director Mike Hogan said. "We've got the early adopters, but we need to bring along the majority now."