(Feb. 15, 2017) The National Sheriffs’ Association has long been a partner of the Treatment Advocacy Center. Sheriffs are on the front lines of our broken mental health system and are strong supporters of programs like AOT to help those most in need. As those with severe mental illness are criminalized, sheriffs become de facto treatment providers, a duty they are neither resourced nor adequately trained for.
aBedInstead is The Treatment Advocacy Center's campaign to help bring awareness to these issues and help ensure those with severe mental illness have access to the care they need, before they end up in a jail cell. And now, thanks to the Sheriffs, aBedInstead is an issue on the radar of the President.
Last week, at a roundtable discussion with President Trump, National Sheriffs’ Association 2nd Vice President and Marion, Indiana county sheriff John Layton explained, “One of the main concerns was not just my office as sheriff, but across the nation -- the mentally ill in the jails, and the people that they're being really, for lack of a better term, warehoused in our jails across America because we don't have the facilities necessary to take care of them on the outside.” In a speech the next day, the President echoed this concern, explaining “As part of our commitment to safe communities, we will also work to address the mental health crisis. Prisons should not be a substitute for treatment.”
Both the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Marion County Sheriffs’ took to social media following the meeting, highlighting aBedInstead on their twitter feeds.
It is no surprise that an Indiana sheriff raised this important issue. Indiana has been hailed for its focus on the need for access to beds to address the mental illness crisis. In December of 2015, then-Governor Mike Pence announced the approval of a new $120 million state hospital to treat mental illness, financed through 20-year taxable bonds. Then Secretary of the Indiana Family & Social Services Administration John Wernert called the new facility, “a new model of care the whole state.” The new 159 bed facility is expected to treat about 1,500 people a year when it opens to the public next year.
We are encouraged by the President’s focus on mental illness behind bars, and we hope that important discussions like these lead to a major reduction in the criminalization of serious mental illness in our country.
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