Handling of mentally ill offenders tops workshops

Monday, Feb. 23 Reducing the Number of Individuals with Mental Illness in County Jails Who spoke? Patrick Fleming, director of behavioral health services (retired), Salt Lake County, Utah Gilbert Gonzales, director, behavioral health services, Bexar County, Texas Fred Osher, M.D., director of health systems and services policy, Council of State Governments' Justice Center What participants learned: Numbers don't lie. And in Bexar County, Texas, the data on arrestees with mental illness or substance use disorder being diverted from jail has been impressive. It's also saving money. Today, about 2,200 nonviolent offenders per month are diverted from jail, Gonzales said. The county has a population of more than 1.7 million and a jail that can hold over 1,000 inmates. Starting in 2002, a group of stakeholders began meeting that included law enforcement, judges and local hospital systems, among others. Their goal was to decrease the number of mentally ill inmates by keeping them from becoming inmates, that is, evaluating their mental health or substance use issues at the earliest point of contact upon arrest and before booking. Police can refer them to a county Restoration Center, which can assess mental health needs and refer them to appropriate treatment. Each of the county's 5,000 law enforcement officers is required to take 40 hours of critical incident training. A video about the restoration center's services (http://youtu. be/_7Pc8V-iXw0) is shown daily at police and sheriff 's roll call. Gonzales said the population that been successfully diverted to mental health services has a rearrest rate of 18 percent, compared to 34 percent for those not diverted. Through a partnership between NACo and the Council of State Governments Justice Center, an initiative to scale-up this kind of approach is underway, Fleming said. He outlined six steps of the process: convene a team of county leaders, establish a benchmark against which to measure success, assess treatment and service capacity, develop a plan with measurable outcomes, use evidence-based practices and track data. "We want to establish a baseline count so we can come back to you with both the pretrial and the sentenced population and their composition and you can understand where the initiatives that you're sponsoring make a difference," Dr. Osher said. NACo and CSG will soon issue a call to action for counties that wish to commit to learning more about, and implementing, such measures.

Staff contact: Nastassia Walsh, 202.942.4289, nwalsh@naco.org.

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Dr. Fred Osher (l), Council of State Governments, responds to a question from a workshop audience member. Also pictured (l-r): Gilbert Gonzales, Bexar County, Texas; Pat Fleming, Salt Lake County, Utah; and Leon Evans, Bexar County, Texas.

Wake County, N.C. Commissioners Caroline Sullivan and Sig Hutchinson take notes at the workshop on reducing the number of mentally ill inmates in jails. Integrity and Civility Management Who spoke? Stuart Brody, consultant, Integrity Intensive What participants learned: Brody argued that ethics rules, particularly in government, were fundamentally limited, and personal decision-making skills would do the heavy lifting when faced with difficult decisions, which he framed as a competition of "rights," rather than right and wrong. "Ethics is a regime of compliance," he said. "Integrity is a culture of values." He outlined the three primary conflicts of interest that public officials face their own ambition versus public interest, loyalty to a contributor versus the duty to be free of those deflections of interest and party versus public interest. "Ethics is the foundation of integrity but it's insufficient to practice integrity," he said. "Integrity as we're going to use it, is the skill at decision making." That decision making, he said, could often run contrary to deeply held cultural traditions, including the Golden Rule. "Say your neighbor asks you for help getting his child a job with the county," he said. "Following the golden rule, wouldn't you want him to do it if you were in his role?" Brody facilitated several group discussion examples using ethical dilemma prompts. Staff contact: Karon Harden, 202.942.4277, kharden@naco.org. Cybersecurity: The New Business Priority for Protecting Private Health and Financial Information Who spoke? Tim Tompkins, senior director for security innovations, Aetna Patrice Bordron, IT risk leader, Nationwide Matthew Chevraux, U.S. Secret Service What participants learned: Passwords might not be the best way to protect users' identities online. Tompkins explained that a behavioral model of authentication can be a more accurate, and multi-faceted, than binary correct-or-incorrect password authentication. Those authentications can include the type of device, geolocation, operating system and user behavior . "If your account gets a log-in one day using an iPhone in the U.S. and the next day in China using an Android device, it's suspicious," he said. Chevraux demonstrated how easily stolen credit card information can be purchased online using bitcoin. He described the organized crime characteristics common in identity theft mostly Russian-speaking from Eastern Europe and walked through the investigation and prosecution of one such hacker in the mid- 2000s. Staff contact: Jerryl Guy, 202.942.4229, jguy@naco.org.

David Whicker (l) chief information officer for Rockingham County, N.C., introduces cybersecurity speakers Matthew Chevraux, Tim Tompkins and Patrice Bordron. Power in Numbers: Forging Regional Economic Development Partnerships Who spoke? Lillian Salerno, USDA Rural Development Supervisor Orlando Trainer, Oktibbeha County, Miss. Commissioner Renee Price, Orange County, N.C. Supervisor Claire Collins, Bath County, Va. What participants learned: Rural economic development needn't originate in your backyard to benefit your county was the key takeaway from this session. County elected officials from Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia outlined how partnerships with neighboring counties and localities in their region are helping to grow their economies. "When you're talking about trying to land these major industrial projects and prospects that can really be a game changer for your community, first of all you have to have the resources in order to attract them," Trainer said. "And we realized in Starkville (the county seat of Oktibbeha County) that we were lacking in that area." Not totally lacking, however. Starkville is home to the University of Mississippi. Trainer shared how his county, in northeast Mississippi, worked collaboratively with neighboring Clay County, the state, and regional economic development partners to land Yokohama Tire Corp. While it's in Clay County, not Oktibbeha, Trainer said his county benefits. "What benefits Clay County benefits Oktibbeha. There's no mandate that says you can't (live in Oktibbeha County) and work in Clay County," he said. Price shared how her county was chosen as the first U.S. manufacturing site for the Japan's largest candy maker Morinaga & Co., Ltd. "It took 18 months, and it was like dating process to try to bring them in," she said. The company broke ground on the $48 million factory last June and it's expected to open this year. Again, a local government partner played a key role. Price said the deal would not have been possible without the city of Mebane, located mostly in neighboring Alamance County with a portion in Orange. It's providing water and sewer infrastructure to the site. "Once we landed this deal, other businesses started coming and asking about the land across the road, so it's having spinoff effects already," she said. Bath County, Va. (pop. 4,700) is the least populous of the three counties, but its biggest asset is tourism. It's home to the Homestead Resort, a national landmark. Collins focused on her county's and neighboring Highland County's "cultural and heritage-based asset managed development." Fifty percent of the businesses in the county are home-based, so growth is largely dependent on Internet connectivity, she said, and growth opportunities are in those that complement tourism. The two counties are partnering through a broadband accessibility grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (a CDBG planning grant) to assess the opportunities to work with the private sector. Currently, they're developing a telecommunications plan to identify business and community needs, and solutions. Staff contact:Jen Horton, 202.942.4274, jhorton@naco.org. Tuesday, Feb. 24 Federal Legislative Policies Affecting County Justice Systems Who spoke? Jay Nelson, government affairs manager, Council of State Governments Elizabeth Pyke, director of government affairs, National Criminal Justice Association What participants learned: The Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate helped create a "perfect storm" that Pyke thinks could mean dramatic justice reform. "This Congress has been in session a little more than a month and we've already seen a number of significant bills introduced that would really promote fairly radical change and important reforms in the states," she said. "I think it's a very exciting time in Congress right now. The fiscal conservatives want to cut prison spending, the faith groups on the left and the right who say 'we're not doing this right,' and the civil rights groups and the states and local governments who say we can do this better and we have been doing this better and 'let's show you, the federal government, the way to more successful planning and programming.'" That said, the two years of protection from sequestration are over, and discretionary spending on grant programs is due to tumble, as it has 40 percent since 2010. With the FBI and Bureau of Prisons' budgets basically untouchable, grant funding absorbs most of the budget control impact. Nelson spoke about two bills that the Council of State Government is focusing on: Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, which has funded 415 mental health courts 854 local police and county sheriffs' offices, and is up for five-year reauthorization though the Mental Health Collaboration Act. That reauthorization would include mental health training for law enforcement and training for dealing with victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. The other, Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act, establishes a national center of excellent in criminal justice and mental health to provide education, training and technical assistance around mental health. It also includes comprehensive training for law enforcement agencies to respond to incidents involving people with mental health issues. Staff contact: Yejin Jang, 202.942.4239, yjang@naco.org.

Group interactions highlighted the Integrity and Civility Management workshop.