By Barbara Cotter
The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — It’s easy enough to think of the people in the nation’s jails and prisons as evil incarnate, especially the repeat offenders who never seem learn their lesson from multiple stays behind bars.
But there’s a good chance that many of the inmates are mentally ill, not inherently bad - a fact not lost on 4th Judicial District Court Judge Deborah J. Grohs. She believes that with a proper diagnosis, continuing treatment and a whole lot of support, criminals with mental illnesses can stay out of trouble and become contributing members of their community.
Grohs is the driving force behind a collaborative effort to create a mental health court that would provide services and support for people with significant behavioral health problems who are facing criminal charges. Expected to start early next year, the mental health court would join a handful of the area’s other specialized courts programs that provide multiple services to keep targeted groups of violators, such as drug users, out of the criminal justice system.
“I was a defense attorney prior to being a judge, and I was frustrated then that there were no resources for my clients who are mentally ill,” Grohs said Friday from Reno, Nev., where she was attending a judicial training course that included training in mental health courts. “I’d see people going to prison for crimes that you knew were a result of their mental illness. I have the same frustration as a judge, and you see the same frustration with prosecutors and defense attorneys.”
By all accounts, the percentage of mentally ill inmates in the nation’s prisons and jails has grown dramatically in the past few decades. In 1998, the Colorado Department of Corrections reported that 10 percent of the inmates in its facilities had a serious mental illness, more than quadruple the number from 1988. By 2006, the figure had jumped to about 25 percent.
It isn’t much better for jails in the state’s largest areas, where 20 to 25 percent of the inmates are believed to have a serious mental illness. In one count earlier this month, 211, or 17 percent, of the 1,241 inmates at the El Paso County jail were noted as having a serious clinical disorder, as defined by the American Psychiatric Association’s gold-standard manual on behaviorial health diagnoses. Paula Presley, bureau chief for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, said that because not all inmates have been diagnosed, up to 30 percent of the jail population could have serious mental illness.
“The jails have become our new asylums,” said Gina Shimeall, coordinator for Colorado’s 18th Judicial District Mental Health Court, which started about two years ago.
Shimeall said the Arapahoe County court has been “phenomenal.” Five participants are getting ready to become the court’s first graduates, but all 37 people in the program have improved dramatically.
“What I see in our population is truly the difference between night and day,” she said. “We have individuals who are medically compliant, thriving, being productive, doing community service work, being able to truly interact with people and socialize in an appropriate manner - and not have police contact. They are 100 percent better than what they were when they came into our program.”
That’s the kind of outcome Grohs hopes to achieve with the local court, which would make sure participants get a proper diagnosis, the right medication and a host of supportive services such as housing. The idea is to stabilize the person and help them function to the best of their ability.
“Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the economical thing to do,” Grohs said. “The cost of incarceration is high, and with the increased supervision needed for people with mental illness in jail, it’s even more costly.”
Grohs is overseeing planning for the mental health court on the legal side, with help from representatives from the district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office and probation services. Police and the sheriff’s office have also given their input.
Lynn Hopeman, executive director of Mental Health America and CEO of its umbrella agency, Pikes Peak Partnership, is heading up the treatment planning, with help from others in the mental health and social services community.
“My job is to bring all the treatment providers to the table to talk about how to give these people treatment and support,” Hopeman said. “And we’re talking to people who provide housing and other community services, because those are the things that make people more stable. If you don’t have a place to live, then you’re in survival mode. And so what you worry about is whether you’re going to have a place to lay your head tonight or food to eat. Mental health treatment is not first on the list.”
Exactly how the court will operate is being hammered out, but overall, it will be along the lines of the area’s other specialized courts: allow people facing criminal charges to plead guilty, enter the program, follow the rules and receive a deferred sentence. There won’t be a hard-and-fast rule about who will be accepted.
“We’ll take misdemeanors and felonies, and look for cases where it’s clear that there’s a correlation between the crime and the mental illness,” she said. “And the person has to have a significant mental illness.”
Grohs is trying to line up grants that could help pay mental health providers in the community to take on the court’s clients.
The effort will be worth it, Shimeall said.
“We should have more throughout the state,” she said. “It really does change the lives of people with with severe mental illness.”
Copyright 2011 ProQuest Information and Learning