Addressing the Intersection between Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice Systems – Webinar, January 23rd
I had the opportunity to participate in a webinar on Wednesday (January 23) on the subject of Addressing the Intersection between Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice Systems. The three speakers were:
- Patricia A. Griffin, PhD, a senior consultant in Pennsylvania Mental Health and Justice Centre of Excellence;
- Bob Mann, RN, LSW, an Administrator of Mental Health Operations in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections; and
- Donna Bond, LPC, Manager of Correctional Criminal Justice and Re-Entry Services, Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
Speaker #1
The webinar began with Patricia Griffin; she opened with some statistics:
- 16.9% of all jail admissions have a serious mental illness;
- Of this, 14.5% are male and 31.0% are female.
These numbers surprised me, in particular the fact that there were twice as many females with mental disorders than males. Patricia also spoke about the high rates of co-occurring substance abuse disorders and other challenges involving trauma, medical problems, and homelessness. When arrested and convicted, these people convicted face long stays in jail.
Patricia then informed us of a collaborative effort by the state of Pennsylvania (PA) to have an impact on this issue – they wanted to do something about the high number of inmates with mental issues. It’s called The Sequential Intercept Model, a framework for understanding how people with mental illness interact with the criminal justice system.
- The term Sequential is meant to illustrate how people move through the criminal justice system in predictable ways;
- And, Intercept refers to the desire to examine the process to identify ways to intercept persons with severe mental illness.
The Westmoreland County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Program and multiple other local stakeholders requested the Pennsylvania (PA) Center of Excellence (CoE), Cross-Systems Mapping and Taking Action for Change workshops to promote progress in addressing criminal justice diversion and treatment needs of adults with mental illness in contact with the criminal justice system. They also wanted the CoE to provide additional information to help guide the implementation of newly received Day Reporting Center and Criminal Justice Liaison grants.
Mapping workshops were set up across the country to help communities address the problems; 27 counties in PA completed the workshops. The attendees were Judges, Law Enforcement, Social Services and local families whose members have been through this system. They serve as a springboard for counties to move forward and to improve their local services within their communities and to try to build better collaborative efforts.
Workshop participants got to understand what is happening at local level and begin to get a clear picture of what resources are available and how people work together. They learned from the workshops sessions that there was a clear pattern showing a lack of sobering service, detox facilities, medical assistance, and housing—this last one was a major concern for people who offend and re-offend. The workshop also found that there should be:
- More collaboration and communications;
- More training for staff; and
- Cross training between systems and expanding housing opportunities.
The workshops were a great success; participant evaluations showed that 94% of the participants would recommend the workshops to other counties.
Speaker #2
The second speaker was Bob Mann who talked about the Oklahoma Collaborative Health Program which started in 2007. This program is a collaboration of several Mental Health partners including: The Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections, The Oklahoma Dept. of Mental Health & Substance abuse, The Dept. of Human Services, The Oklahoma Health Care Authority, Social Security Administration and the Dept. of Rehabilitation Services – Disability Determination Division. The key elements contributing to the success of this program were:
- Benefit Planning – this helps people with high risk return in making sure that their benefits are in place to help them on release from prison; and
- Focus Groups – Looking at gaps causing people who return to prison.
About 50% of offenders have a history of, or are exhibiting some form of mental illness and 26% exhibit serious mental health problems. Also of note was the massive increase in people on psychotropic medication – from 1998 – 2006, there was an increase of 289%.
Speaker #3
The third speaker was Donna Bond. She explained how her inter-agency mental health re-entry program is unique in that the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health has taken ownership for the continuity of Mental Health services for offenders with the highest level of Mental Health need.
Discharge Managers (boundary spanners) receive considerable training and serve as part of the treatment team. The goal is for the individual to leave prison with Social Security benefits in place, a Medicare entitlement aligned so funding is in place for medical and mental health services following release. This process starts 120 days prior to offenders scheduled discharge.
Re-entry Intensive Care Co-ordination Teams (RICCT) meet with offenders a minimum of 90 days before the release date from prison, and they work with the offender in the community, until the offender has adjusted to life following incarceration. RICCT teams also work at helping getting the offender housed immediately on release, and also taking care of the offenders clothing and hygiene, and generally getting them a good start back into the community. Bob Mann said that 46.3% of most re-offenders return to prison within 36 months – the program has shown very good results – only 25.2% of offenders processed through the RICCT teams return.
My Thoughts
This is a subject that I am very interested in, and I’m curious why there are there more offenders today who have mental health problems, compared with thirty to forty years ago? A lot of these problems may stem from the natural percentage of the population who suffer mental illness and secondly from health problems connected to serious substance (drug) abuse.
The latter is a real and ongoing problem. From reading the stories in the newspapers we can see that drug abuse generally cause more crimes to be committed. There have been many recent news stories about crime committed by people with drug related addictions. A few examples below:
- Thomas Ashcroft, a homeless burglar in the U.K., started fires at hospitals so he could steal money to buy drugs. The fires caused a distraction so he could steal from the tills to help fund his drug addiction. He has been sentenced to eight years in prison.
- James Holmes the gunman who massacred 12 people in a cinema in Aurora, Colorado, was hooked on prescription painkillers. He started out life as a bright, quite brilliant young boy.
- In Sundays Irish Times, Jan 27th 2012, a story showed that Crime Figures for the Republic show a sharp rise in the number of sexual offences, kidnappings and drug related crimes between 2006 and 2010, according to Central Statistics Office figures recently published. Sadly, drugs are available everywhere in Ireland; young people have easy access to them, there is never a problem buying them or knowing where to find them.
It also seems like mental health problems are on the increase. We only have to open our newspapers each day to see tragic stories of people who have taken their own life, or have killed loved ones and themselves. Some were probably receiving treatment from mental health services, and then may have stopped attending clinics or they ran out of money to pay for treatment. We need to come up with better ways to take care of people with mental health problems. Not to “control” them, but to ensure they are getting appropriate treatment and to make sure they are taking their medicine.
People with mental health illnesses need care and attention, and people in their family and local community should be aware of their problem and “look out” for them. If they should need help, families and people in the community should know who to contact if they feel something is not quite right.
The Oklahoma program is a good example of this, and the statistics show that this is a successful approach. The hard work of people like Patricia Griffin, Bob Mann and Donna Bond is crucial in the success of such program. They are committed and passionate about their work in helping to re-habilitate people, to keep them from a life of crime, and help them to adjust to a happier life without re-offending. It’s important for everyone to become more aware and supportive of community efforts like this, and to help, where we can.
until next time…Is fhearr fheuchainn na bhith san duil
Mary