(April 10, 2017) “Innovation happens for us when there are no other options left.” With this statement, John Snook, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, kicked off a 12-minute, TED-style talk at the Worldwide Pretrial Innovators Convention in Washington, DC, last month. John noted that by the end of each day, 5,000 people with serious mental illness (SMI) are booked into a jail, totaling 1.8 million men and women a year.
John explained how 100,000 people with SMI sit in jail because they have been found incompetent to stand trial (IST). IST services most commonly take place in state hospitals. Most state hospitals maintain waitlists of IST inmates because they do not have enough beds to meet demand. Waits are typically around one month but some are as long as a year. While the inmates wait, typically without treatment, they deteriorate, are often victimized and sometimes die.
John offered the Pretrial Justice Institute’s conference attendees — advocates for fair and effective pretrial justice practices — a solution. The answer could be found in the brand of mathematics that deals with the study of waiting lines or queues (see “Emptying the ‘New Asylums’: A Beds Capacity Model to Reduce Mental Illness Behind Bars).
Our Office of Research and Public Affairs worked with University of North Carolina researchers on a model that projects how small changes can dramatically reduce pretrial bed waits and the mass incarceration of people with SMI. We looked at three variables (demand for beds, average lengths of stay, staffed beds available) in five sample states. The results are amazing: In Texas, reducing the average hospital stay from 189 days to 186 days would reduce forensic bed waits from an average of two months to three days.
Watch John’s compelling discussion of this crisis and our real, workable solution. What can you do? Learn how to be an advocate!