Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON — What’s wrong with this picture? The largest administrator of mental health services in Harris County is the county jail. It’s a symptom of a national problem: There are now more than three times more seriously mentally ill individuals in jails and prisons in this country than in hospitals.
But in Texas, that ratio is almost eight to one. In the Harris County Jail, the third largest in the country, on any given day 20 to 25 percent of the 10,000 or so inmates are receiving psychotropic medications. And jailing these inmates isn’t cheap: According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Texas, each costs taxpayers between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, compared with $22,000 for those without mental illness. And the mentally ill tend to stay in jail or prison two to five times longer.
It’s not the jail’s own funding, however, that is precipitating the crisis: It is the fact that county Sheriff Adrian Garcia’s office contracts with the Harris County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority to provide its mental health services, and MHMRA, already struggling financially, is facing severe budget cuts.
When the Department of State Health Services announced major cuts earlier this year, much of it from MHMRA, Dr. Steven Schnee, MHMRA’s executive director, told KHOU-TV, “It’s really tragic how we are treating these conditions...People with these serious conditions don’t go away. They will resurface someplace and we will pay as a community.” He said that would mean higher emergency room costs and higher crime.
Sheriff Garcia is similarly concerned, which is why he and his colleagues in the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas are urging that no further cuts be made. This time last year they were asking for increased funding, but that was before the grim fiscal reality of up to a $24 billion state shortfall for the next two years, and before legislators asked for across-the-board department cuts of 10 percent. But even keeping funding at current levels will essentially mean a cut, since the demand for services keeps growing, as do expenses.
According to the sheriff’s office, if more individuals could receive mental health services before an incident with law enforcement lands them in jail, it would save taxpayers millions of dollars. That makes eminent sense to us: A dollar spent by the state on care for a law-abiding resident is a far better deal for that person, for the criminal justice system and for all of us than the multiple dollars it costs to provide that care in jail.
But it’s hard to get the public to invest up front, even if it’s an obvious money-saving proposition. Two years ago, a bond issue was put before voters for a new booking and release center for the county jail, which could better address the needs of the mentally ill. It failed by 3,500 votes.
Today, it’s not even on the table. The mantra of state government remains: Cuts, cuts and more cuts. We can only endorse the pleas of Sheriff Garcia and other advocates to at least refrain from further dismantling services to the mentally ill. Fiscally, not to mention morally, it’s not just a cut, it’s a life-threatening injury.
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