Mental health court needed: If not now, then when?
By Michael Sullivan 08/13/2009
Prosecuting criminals and prison reform have always been controversial subjects. For the last several decades, it seems Americans have been diverging on how to handle those who break the law — we either adhere to the principal of “An eye for eye; a tooth for a tooth,” or the philosophy of, “Choose compassion and care, because we, as a society, are supposed to be more civilized.”
In the midst of this divergence, little has gotten done to propel anything positive forward. While activists are still fighting on both sides of the fence, the problem we face now is dire. With Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signing off on the state budget last month, cutting more than $1 billion in funding for prisons, citizens are raising their concerns about the proposed 40,000 inmates set to be released to make up for the funding shortfall.
Prior to the budget cuts, however, the Ventura County Grand Jury came up with an impressive recommendation in June: add a mental health court. A mental health court would prosecute eligible nonviolent criminals and send them to rehab facilities for proper treatment and counseling rather than throwing them away into the prison system.
Unfortunately, county officials this week did not support the recommendation fully, saying that there was not a present need to create full-time staff to support such an endeavor, nor are funds available during the budget crisis. They were also concerned about how and where to house such inmates.
The catch to this, though, was that the sheriff’s department confirmed that there are currently about 175 mentally ill inmates being treated at the county jail on an average day. According to the California Department of Corrections, it costs taxpayers approximately $35,000 a year to house one inmate. According to these figures, Ventura County pays more than $6 million to care for those mentally ill inmates in one year.
According to the grand jury report, the mental health court and alternative treatment facilities saved the counties of San Bernardino and Santa Clara between $500,000 and more than $2 million, respectively. If the 76 mentally ill patients deemed suitable by the grand jury were treated through the mental health court, based on the financial statistics from the report, the county could potentially save millions of dollars each year. The money saved in the future could pay to staff a mental health court, and in turn, lessen the burden on the prison system and actually help those who need it the most. This seems to be not only an appropriate solution, but a logical one.
Still there are major hurdles to leap — allocating funds to create a mental health court would be difficult to do during a state and countywide budget crisis. But Clyde Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation, believes now is the time to seriously broach the subject and figure out how much it would actually cost to make a mental health court a reality, instead of just tossing the possibility aside because it doesn’t seem to be economically viable.
We couldn’t agree more. If we focused on treating mentally ill criminals rather than handling them like common criminals, everyone would be better off. We believe that the recommendations of the grand jury and Reynolds are tangible solutions to progressive reform to our prison and justice system that are so desperately needed right now. We hope private entities such as Turning Point and the public sector work together toward creating a mental health court.
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