By Sue Lindsay
Rocky Mountain News
Related: Mental health crisis plagues N.O.
DENVER, Colo. — Inmates at the Denver County Jail are generally not a happy lot, so it’s unusual for them to send thank-you notes.
But that’s exactly what a number of them have done after they were placed in a new program at the jail designed to address the needs of mentally ill inmates.
Among the fan mail is a note from one inmate who says, “thank you all and blessings.”
Another, who describes himself as a 20-year veteran of institutionalization of various types, wrote that the program “transformed me from a hopeless, severely depressed suicidal individual to someone who now can begin to look towards further continuing hope and the potential of successfully managing my mental health issues. I consider myself blessed to continue to benefit from the services provided.”
Yet another wrote a two-page letter thanking the staff for changing his life. “You have shown me the most important lesson of all, human kindness,” he wrote. “Thank you all from my heart.”
The mental health program is one of several new programs implemented last year that jail officials credit for a dramatic drop in assaults and fights at the jail.
Officials report that incidents of jail violence in 2007 are down 23 percent from their levels in 2006.
Undersheriff and corrections director Bill Lovingier credits the decrease to the mental health transition unit and other programs put in place last year to assess inmates and prepare them to stay out of jail once they are released.
‘Better shape’
“Ultimately we are turning people out in better shape than we used to,” he said. “They are better prepared to cope and be assimilated in the community and hopefully not get re-arrested.”
Jail fights dropped 22 percent, and assaults dropped 14 percent. Sexual assaults dropped from six in 2006 to four in 2006. Suicide attempts dropped from eight in 2006 to six in 2007, a 33 percent decrease.
“In each of these categories we are seeing a significant decline,” Lovingier said. “Overall, all of these programs are making a difference.”
The mentally ill have flooded the nation’s prisons and jails since the movement to close state mental hospitals in the 1960s, said staff psychologist Margaret Reiland. The idea was to shift treatment to community mental health centers, but that plan failed when funding for the programs was cut.
Nationwide, 670,000 mentally ill people are put in jail each year, while only 83,750 are put in state psychiatric hospitals, said Reiland, who leads Denver’s transition unit.
“Jails have become the new mental health centers,” she said.
Denver’s mental health transition program places inmates with mental illnesses in the same unit where they receive therapy and medications and are connected with community services to help them stay out of jail once released. The idea is not to just “warehouse” the inmates until their release, Lovingier said.
“For so long, that’s all that happened,” he said. “They were medicated and then released to the street.”
Among other things, case managers help inmates obtain Social Security cards, birth certificates and Colorado identification cards necessary to receive benefits and treatment in the community. About 80 percent of the inmates lack these vital documents, he said.
People put in jail eventually will be released, Reiland said, and many of the crimes the mentally ill commit are a manifestation of their illness, not criminal intent.
Without referrals for psychiatric medication, Reiland said, many mentally ill inmates will deteriorate rapidly once they are released.
They may break in to a dwelling for shelter, self-medicate with alcohol or illegal drugs, steal food or become violent because their illness causes them to misinterpret someone else’s behavior.
“We can release them better than we found them and make the community safer, or we can maintain the status quo where people are feeling afraid, angry and hopeless about crime,” she said.
Some inmates say it is the first time they have received treatment for long-standing mental health problems, Lovingier said.
‘Likely they will fail’
“If we can’t connect them with something on the outside, it’s likely they will fail,” Lovingier said. “The goal is to reduce recidivism, improve their mental health and, long term, reduce costs.”
It’s too early to fully assess the program’s impact on recidivism, Reiland said.
“We are seeing some return. But the crimes they are arrested for are less serious, the amount of time between offenses is longer and the amount of time it takes to get them stabilized is reduced,” she said.
Another new program at the jail, life skills, focuses on inmates sentenced for misdemeanors, Lovingier said. Case managers help them develop an “exit strategy” for getting out of jail and back into the community. Inmates are counseled on how to find and keep a job, among other things.
“It’s a plan for how to stay out of trouble once they are released,” Lovingier said. Otherwise, jail is a “revolving door” for some of these inmates who frequently break the law again.
The jail also has put in place an intense training program for its staff on how to prevent, defuse and properly handle critical incidents that arise in the jail population, Lovingier said. Deputies are trained in how to verbally de-escalate an incident so it doesn’t become violent, he said.
The reduction of violent incidents at the jail is a direct result of all those programs, Lovingier said.
“To have this kind of decline in jail violence is significant,” he said. “You never know when any one particular incident could be life-threatening. The less violence there is in the jail, the safer people feel and the more inclined they are to participate in programs to improve themselves and prepare themselves for life on the outside.”
Copyright 2008 Denver Publishing Company