The Impact of the Mentally Ill Offenders on Local Jails

A critical problem in California jails, run by the local county sheriffs, has been overcrowding for a variety of issues. In California, local county jails house almost 80,000 inmates every day. Twenty counties are under legal court-ordered limits capping their jail populations and an additional twelve counties are voluntarily complying with caps in anticipation of court orders on their jail populations. The court orders are based on federal and state standards. As a result in some counties, inmates are only serving a small portion of their sentences due to a lack of jail capacity.

A couple of years ago, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office saw this issue raising its head and commissioned the National Institute of Corrections, a nationally-renowned correctional organization, to complete an independent assessment of jail practices and justice issues contributing to overcrowding at our jails locally. One of those glaring issues was the incarceration of persons with moderate to severe mental illnesses. Since the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill persons over the last several years, the jail and prison populations have swollen. This social problem has come to Santa Cruz County as well.

The Sheriff’s Office operates four jail facilities which house approximately 600 inmates at any given time. Persons with chronic, severe mental illness comprise approximately 6% of the total inmate population (this does not include those inmates with mild to moderate mental illness). These individuals impact the jails and take a lot of intervention by our jail and mental health staff, taxes field officer resources, court time and probation resources, in addition to the effects on community safety and business environments. Complicating this issue with this group of offenders is their substance abuse which exacerbates their anti-social behavior and decreases the effectiveness of mental health services. Many of these offenders are incarcerated numerous times as a result of their mental illness at a much higher percentage than the general population and many times for minor offenses.

Recognizing that the jail system is not the proper venue for their treatment, the Sheriff’s Office applied for a Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction (MIOCR) grant from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The Sheriffs Office was recently notified that a grant in the amount of $999,916 for an 18 month period was awarded to our agency in collaboration with the county Probation Department and Health Services Agency. The core of the project is the delivery of services to the mentally ill offender by a team focused on treating their underlying mental illness and keeping them from re-offending and going back to jail.

The team is comprised of two Mental Health Client Specialists, two Probation Officers, a Registered Nurse, a licensed therapist, a job development specialist, a Sheriff’s Deputy and a Corrections Officer. The staff will provide comprehensive, individualized treatment plans and will monitor the clients in the community to assess their progress. They will exert pressure to help them stay on their medications and out of trouble. The clients that cause disturbances or committed a non-serious offense will be intercepted by local law enforcement and directed to the assigned deputy who will take responsibility for the person. If appropriate, the deputy will make use of alternatives to arrest, including mental health interventions and substance abuse detoxification. If the person does go to jail, the assigned Correctional Officer will ensure the treatment team members are notified for intervention. The deputy and other team members will provide training for law enforcement on successful methods of interacting with mentally ill individuals.

This team will work out of a Community Corrections Center office located outside of the main jail facility and will rotate on-call positions to afford 24 hour, 7 day week coverage. The team hopes to have a caseload of sixty individuals at any given time. Past experience shows that most clients can average over 2 years of service. Some community-based organizations will also be utilized for providing basic necessities, detoxification services, and work opportunities for these offenders.

This is not just some “feel-good” program. By doing this valuable mental health intervention, we hope to provide appropriate access to treatment and spare the community the fiscal burden on the criminal justice system of these individuals who get caught up in the crime cycle due to their mental illness. Dumping these individuals continually into the jail system does not work.