Daily Press
Mental Health: Here's why...

Original article

Here's why we should not let jails continue to be 'the new asylums'
Opinion

April 13, 2008 

The wish list from the Newport News Jail says it all: two substance abuse counselors, a mental health worker, more money for medical supplies, including pharmaceuticals.

A report by the Justice Policy Institute says it best: "Jails have become the new asylums."

A lot of what's going on with the Newport News jail, and jails across the nation, doesn't have to do with protecting society from criminals. It has to do with warehousing mentally ill people, who end up behind bars because our communities lack the mental health services that could keep them out of jail, or keep them from returning after their first brush with the law.

And return is what they're likely to do, without treatment. Inmates with mental problems are more likely to be repeat offenders.




Nationwide, two-thirds of the people in local jails aren't only criminals. They're ill or addicted to drugs or alcohol. And this might surprise you: Women inmates are much more likely than men to have mental problems.

Illness, or substance abuse, may play a role in why many of these people are in jail. It certainly plays a role in what their presence means to the jail environment. It plays a role in the kind of staff that's needed, hence Newport News Sheriff Gabe Morgan's plea to the City Council on Tuesday for funds to hire mental health professionals.

The Department of Justice contributes some grim understanding of why Morgan's under the gun: Not only do two-thirds of the inmates in local jails have mental problems, most of them are actively showing symptoms, especially symptoms of psychosis, depression or mania. A lot of them are agitated or angry. Many inmates have a history of trouble welling up in anti-social action. These are hardly conditions conducive to safety and security in a jail.

Inmates with mental problems are more likely than other inmates to have been abused, to be dependent on drugs or alcohol, and to have parents who were substance abusers. But very few — one in six nationwide — get the treatment they need while in jail.

Better mental health services, in and out of jails, can help on several fronts:

• They can keep people from unraveling to the point that they end up breaking the law.

• They can intervene once people have their first brush with the law, addressing the underlying problems. Inmates with a history of such problems tend to be repeat offenders. It makes sense that addressing those problems could reduce the number of offenses, and all the costs, monetary and otherwise, of crime.

• They can reduce the number of people who need to be jailed. For Newport News and many other jails, where overcrowding is putting staff as well as inmates at risk, that's a big deal.

• They can save money in operating costs. It costs $43 per day to keep one person in the Newport News City Jail — and that's below the state average. Multiply that daily expense by a few months, and you can buy a lot of treatment.

• They can save money in construction costs. Reducing the number of people jailed can also avoid the significant new expense of adding capacity, which overcrowded jails everywhere are struggling to do — sometimes under court order.

It's not that the local Community Services Board, which runs mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse services, doesn't try. It does, and it's a recognized model for how a broad array of services can be delivered on a shoestring budget.

But that shoestring just doesn't stretch far enough.

If, in addition to the humanitarian case, we need an economic reason to get serious about funding mental health services in our communities, Sheriff Morgan's request, and the reality in the jail he runs, provides it.

So the question for the Newport News City Council, and every city council and board of supervisors, and even the state legislature, is this: How adequate is your funding for local mental health services, both in and out of jail?

And the follow-up choice is this: Would you rather spend the money upfront on mental health services? Or spend it later on more deputies and more space in the lockup?

Maybe this way to look at it will help with the answer: The first approach helps people. The second assumes it's better to wait until they commit another crime — and claim another victim.