Leaders of the Council of State Governments Justice Center laud Members of the U.S. House of Representatives for passage yesterday of the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act (MIOTCRRIA), H.R. 3992.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), will make a significant commitment to addressing the needs of both the criminal justice system and individuals with mental illnesses who come into contact with it.

“The passage of the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act illustrates the extraordinary bipartisan consensus that exists among elected officials to increase the accessibility of integrated mental health and substance abuse treatment, and to promote collaborative efforts between criminal justice and mental health agencies," said Dr. James S. Reinhard, Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, and a Justice Center board member.

The new bill will raise the authorization level of MIOTCRA from $50 million per year to $75 million per year and will extend the authorization through 2013. The bill will also reauthorize the mental health courts grant program, and require a study to be completed on the prevalence of mental illness in prisons and jails. Download the complete bill text (pdf).

"Reauthorizing MIOTCRA will provide much-needed support to states and local governments across the country. Every state is now seeking to design, implement, and expand initiatives that will improve the response to people with mental illnesses in contact with the criminal justice system. Front-line professionals, like corrections and police officers, are telling us that this will increase public safety, reduce state spending, and save lives," said Justice Center board member and Connecticut State Representative Michael Lawlor. “We urge the Senate to take swift action in support of this bill.”

For more information on the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act, contact Sara Paterni.

The Texas Chief Justice Task Force, led by the Honorable Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, has set forth a series of goals for 2008 that will build on successes in the past year and improve outcomes for people with mental illnesses involved with the criminal justice system.

In 2007, the task force helped to bring about legislation that facilitated information-sharing among criminal justice and mental health agencies. The task force designed a system to identify in the Department of Public Safety records individuals who are also listed in the state mental health service database (Department of State Health Services; DSHS). Judge Keller and key task force members presented the system to the 80th Texas Legislature, and these recommendations and related funding were adopted in May 2007 (SB 839 by Senator Duncan, a member of the task force). The new information-sharing mechanism, which permits authorized jail personnel to gather additional information on individuals flagged as having prior contact with the public mental health system, is expected to be operational by September 2008.

Judge Keller’s task force now plans to recommend changes to the state’s reporting and jail intake processes. The goal is to identify as quickly as possible people arrested who have a mental health diagnosis or history of treatment and to transmit this information in a uniform manner to court officials while respecting individuals' privacy rights.  These efforts will be coordinated with the new $82 million program for jail diversion run by the Department of State Health Services, another product of last year’s legislative session. This program will fund mobile response teams and a hotline that will provide mental health interventions for people identified at intake as potentially having mental illnesses.

Over the next year, the task force hopes to accomplish the following: recommend changes to the statewide jail intake form to add a new flagging mechanism to indicate potential mental illness; examine the legal changes necessary for court magistrates within 24 hours of arrest to order the completion of a uniform mental health report form; design and pilot this form; and recommend that legislation be enacted that makes it a requirement in Texas. The task force hopes that enhancing procedures to identify early at jail intake people who might need mental health treatment will ensure that jail personnel make use of the new diversion program and are able to determine which individuals need mental health interventions as early as possible.

Together, all of these advances will help to improve the process through which people with mental illnesses entering the criminal justice system are identified and connected to treatment services in Texas. The task force’s work has been made possible through the Chief Justices’ Criminal Justice/Mental Health Leadership Initiative, which is coordinated by the Council of State Governments Justice Center and GAINS Center and supported by the JEHT Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

• Save the date: 3/5/08 - 3/8/08 American Psychology-Law Society Conference "Bridging the Discipline," Jacksonville, FL
• Save the date: 3/18/08 - 3/20/08 CMHS National GAINS Center Conference "Creating More Effective Services," Washington, DC

The Ledger (FL) - Legislature, courts involved in patching mental health system
1/20/08 - “A comprehensive report ordered by the Florida Supreme Court and released last fall does more than illustrate the state’s shortcomings in delivering mental health treatment.”

Daily Journal (IL) - Mentally ill inmates may get help
1/17/08 - “A proposed new court program would separate out and try to get special help for those with mental illness—about 20 to 30 percent of people charged with a crime.”

Mankato Free Press (MN) - City defends police training: Police deal daily with mental illness cases
1/11/08 - “Mankato officials say the city’s police force works closely with the mental health community and routinely deals with calls involving people with mental health issues. Those calls, they say, overwhelmingly end well.”

Toledo Blade (OH) - Michigan judge seeks to change the way courts treat mentally ill
1/04/08 - “Judge Milton Mack has been frustrated for years with Michigan’s increasingly crowded and costly prison system.”

WCSH6 (ME) - Study shows benefit for mental illness training of corrections officers
1/03/08 - “CIT programs have worked well for police on the street, and now a new study out from the University Of New England shows they work well in jails, too.”

Cleveland.com (OH) - Cuyahoga launching juvenile Mental Health Court
12/30/07 - "In January, after years of planning, the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court will try to tackle the problem by opening its first Mental Health Court, to make sure kids get help rather than primarily focus on their crime. The court’s decision was bolstered, in part, by a study of more than 200 juveniles arrested and brought into the county detention center during the last five years."

Columbia Missourian (MO) - Boone County struggles to meet mental health care needs for inmates
12/17/07 - “According to Capt. Warren Brewer of the Boone County Sheriff’s Department, the number of mentally ill inmates at the Boone County Jail is much higher -- at least 30 percent of the jail population, which totaled 7,652 in 2006.”

Associated Press (FL) - Judge: Treating the mentally ill is better than jailing them
12/12/07 - “A groundbreaking proposal designed to keep mentally ill people from winding up in jails and prisons will not result in dangerous patients being put back on the streets, a judge assured lawmakers Tuesday.”