Question

Expand on your thoughts about jail systems becoming a long term placement option for persons with severe mental illness that have perhaps been deemed incompetent to stand trial? Should this be a State problem or should the Federal government step up as they did years ago.

Answer 1

Federal govt should step in this matter as inadequate responses to the state's failure to provide timely pretrial hospitalization to detainees who have a serious mental illness and are in need of this level of service. It has been observed that the services are not provided at the right time and right place to those detainees.

Jails are complicated institutions. Their populations include pretrial, often acutely ill, and very stressed detainees and posttrial offenders convicted of crimes and serving relatively short sentences.

In order to provide proper treatments to the detainees, the jails now have the capacity to provide treatment for some of their inmates who require acute or semiacute psychiatric services, need voluntary medicine management, and have psychiatric problems that are routine in nature.

These situations are usually managed while the inmate is in the general population or in a specialized mental health unit within the jail. However, there are situations that go beyond the expertise of most jails and for which involuntary psychiatric hospital level care is needed and should be sought.

Hence proper contacts should be there with state hospitals in order to provide timely treatment.