(May 11, 2015) In Arkansas and across the country, jails have become the single largest facility housing minor offenders with mental illness for no other reason than that society has nowhere else to put them (“Jail: America’s new mental institution,” KTHV, May 6).
"Unfortunately, many of the individuals who end up in our jails are mentally ill…,” said Little Rock District Court Judge Alice Lightle. “I certainly don't like to see somebody get locked up when it's pretty clear that the issue is a mental health issue.”Pulaski County Sheriff Doc Holladay cites a lack of alternative resources as the reason why mentally-ill misdemeanor offenders end up behind bars instead of in a hospital bed.
"Clearly, it's not the kind of long-term help that they need, we're basically being used as a temporary holding facility to get these people out of sight and out of mind," said Holladay.
But there are alternatives to warehousing people with serious psychiatric illness in jails and prisons. For example, police in San Antonio, Texas have taken an approach touted as “the future of policing.”
"The jails have become the number one treatment facility for the mentally ill," said Officer Joseph Smarro of the San Antonio Police Mental Health Unit. "We truly measure our success by never dealing with somebody again…Because, we know that we've done a good job with them, and that they may never need law enforcement again. And shouldn't that be our ultimate goal?"
Arkansas has tried to address the issue before but keeps running into that same problem, said Judge Lightle.
"We had the counties, we had the sheriffs, we had the mental health folks, we had a lot of people in the room, but the problem is just resources," Lightle said.
Jails and prisons have indeed become America’s “new asylums.” In fact, there are 10 times more individuals with serious mental illness in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals.
Arkansas received an “F” grade for using mental health courts and crisis intervention teams (CIT) – diversion programs proven to reduce the criminalization of mental illness.
There is still much work to be done in reforming this country’s broken mental health system, particularly in Arkansas.
Read the Treatment Advocacy Center report “Prevalence of Mental Health Diversion Practices: A Survey of the States” to learn more.
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