NACo President Ken Mayfield kicked off his presidential initiative on diverting non-violent mentally ill offenders from county jails with a visit to Los Angeles County.
“One of my initiatives as NACo president is to look at gathering support and getting counties involved in making leadership decisions in diverting the non-violent mentally ill from our jails,” Mayfield said during the Jan. 30 visit.
The tour of the county began with a visit to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Approximately 22,000 inmates are housed in jail, with 10 percent receiving mental health services.
L.A. County Sheriff Leroy Baca spoke to NACo officials during the visit and acknowledged that the jail should not be the place for individuals to receive mental health services, and emphasized that the lack of alternative mental health treatment options has left the jail as the last resort. “The matter remains that there are too many Americans who have mental challenges and jails should not be the answer,” Baca said
Marvin J. Southard, director, L.A. County Department of Mental Health, and Commander Charles Jackson of the Sheriff’s Department introduced a presentation on one of the key programs L.A. County uses to divert the mentally ill. The nationally-known program, Mental Evaluation Teams, pairs law enforcement officers with mental health clinicians to respond to 911 calls involving mentally ill citizens. Team members have been specially trained to identify, evaluate and locate the appropriate placement for the mentally ill citizen. Placements can include shelters, medical facilities, or jail if necessary. County staff members stressed that this program’s success is due to the strong partnership between the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the County Department of Mental Health.
“This longer-term mental health and law enforcement partnership is exemplified by the Mental Evaluation Team [MET]. MET created a model that has been the seed for a lot of further cooperation and mutual appreciation between the law enforcement and mental health systems,” Southard explained.
The County Department of Mental Health has developed similar partnerships with the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Pasadena Police departments.
Mayfield praised L.A. County for using this team approach, which last year helped divert more than 6,000 persons to health facilities and programs.
Mayfield highlighted another powerful feature of the L.A. program. When diverting a mentally ill person in need of medical care, the team also determines if the person has Medicaid or private insurance. That way they can pinpoint the appropriate hospital that would accept the person’s medical benefit.
“This is an especially important aspect,” Mayfield said, “Because when non-violent mentally ill individuals are jailed, they lose their Medicaid or other federal benefits. It becomes very difficult to re-establish those benefits once they are released. Through this program, L.A. County is working to avoid that scenario, and is working to find solutions that offer maximum benefit to the mentally ill individual and to the system.”
The county began operating its first team in 1993. Due to its success and support from county residents, there are now 18 teams. What is the success rate? In FY01-02, the law enforcement/mental health teams responded to 7,121 calls for intervention. Of these, only 107 resulted in arrest. Given the national recognition of this model, Sacramento County, Calif. and Baltimore County have investigated initiating similar models.
Also visited by the NACo delegation was a facility in Long Beach called the Village Integrated Service Agency. This community-based program provides treatment, housing assistance, linkages to health care, employment services or other assistance to individuals who are homeless or at risk of incarceration, including those with serious mental illnesses who have been recently released or are pending release from the criminal justice system.
The program is funded through special legislation established by the state of California in 1999 to reduce homelessness and incarceration among people with mental illness. The village agency is one of several agencies contracted by the county to provide services to accomplish that goal. The village staff work closely with jail mental health services to link people in jail with community agencies. When clients are released from jail they can already be connected to services. There are a total of 1,680 individuals enrolled in the program.
This program has had impressive results. For clients enrolled in the program for at least one year, there was a 77 percent increase in permanent housing, a 65 percent reduction in the number of incarcerations, and an 80 percent decrease in the total number of days participants were incarcerated. These results were based on comparing data for 720 participants from the 12 months prior to their enrollment to the 12 months after enrollment in the program.
The success of the village integrated-services approach has sparked much national interest and the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency is funding counties across the country to develop models based on the village program.
The delegation will visit three other counties to learn about best strategies for diverting the non-violent mentally ill from entering the criminal justice system.
At the conclusion of the visits, NACo will issue a report for members highlighting these model county programs.
(For questions about the Presidential Initiative on Diverting the Non-Violent Mentally Ill from County Jails, please contact Lesley Buchan, Project Manager, Community Services Division, at (202) 942-4261 or lbuchan@naco.org.)
