Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions - S. 1194

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

By Mr. DEWINE (for himself, Mr. LEAHY, Mr. GRASSLEY, Ms. CANTWELL, and Mr. DOMENICI):

    S. 1194. A bill to foster local collaborations which will ensure that resources are effectively and efficiently used within the criminal and juvenile justice systems; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

"PART HH—ADULT AND JUVENILE COLLABORATION PROGRAM GRANTS

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I am proud to join with Senator DEWINE and Senator PATRICK LEAHY along with Senators GRASSLEY and DOMENICI in cosponsoring this important legislation. This bill will take steps to reduce the prevalence of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system by providing more effective treatment. Forty percent of the mentally ill in this country come in contact with the criminal justice system, many for minor but repeated offenses. This wastes tremendous law enforcement resources that can be better focused on more urgent responsibilities and results in many of the mentally ill sitting in jail cells where little treatment is available to them. My State has already taken some forward looking action in this area, and this legislation is an important next step.

    The Mentally Ill Crime Reduction Act of 2003 funds new grants that will give States the tools they need to work collaboratively to break the cycle of mentally ill people repeatedly moving through the corrections system. This legislation will allow more jurisdictions to follow Seattle's lead in creating mental health courts that monitor individuals to keep them in treatment and out of jail. It will provide much needed funding to mental health and substance abuse programs, and it will provide critical dollars for treatment of those incarcerated in or released from prisons. The legislation has the support of Washington State Corrections Director Joe Lehman and the Washington Department of Social and Health Services as well as the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the Council of State Governments. I'd like to especially thank the Bazelon Center for its work in this area.

    Last year, the Council on State Governments Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project issued a report that detailed the imbalance of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system. The Project found that, while those suffering from serious mental illness represent approximately five percent of the population of this country, they represent over 16 percent of the prison population. Of that 16 percent, nearly three-quarters also have a substance abuse problem, and nearly half were incarcerated for committing a nonviolent crime. In some jurisdictions recidivism rates for mentally ill inmates can reach over 70 percent. Police, judges and prosecutors are usually without options of what to do with mentally ill patients, given the lack of health services, and thus many end up in jail for minor crimes. The Los Angeles County Jail alone holds as many as 3,300 individuals with mental illness, more than any state hospital or mental health institution in the United States.

    Each time a mentally ill individual is incarcerated, his or her mental condition will likely worsen. Once incarcerated, people with mental illness are particularly susceptible to harming themselves or others. This environment exacerbates their mental illness, yet access to effective counseling or medication is severely limited. This in turn brings on depression or delusions that immobilize them; many have spent years trying to mask torments or hallucinations with alcohol or drugs and on average spend more time in prisons.

    This problem is particularly acute in the area of juvenile offenders. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reports that over 20 percent of children in the juvenile justice system, over 155,000, have serious mental health problems. This bill creates specialized training programs for juvenile and criminal justice agency personnel in identifying symptoms of mentally ill individuals that will help identify and treat juveniles at an earlier stage.

    The prevalence of people with mentally illness in the criminal justice system comes at a high price to taxpayers. In King County, WA, officials identified 20 people who had been repeatedly hospitalized, jailed or admitted to detoxification centers. These emergency services cost the county approximately $1.1 million in a single year. In contrast, an Illinois Cooperative Program which brought criminal justice and mental health service personnel together to provide services to those mentally ill patients released from jail calculated that the 30 individuals in the study spend approximately 2,200 days less in jail, and 2,100 fewer days, in hospitals than they had the previous year, for a savings of $1.2 million dollars.

    In 1997, Seattle Fire Department Captain Stanley Stevenson was murdered by an individual who had been found incompetent by the local municipal court but was released because of the lack of alternative options. This murder was the impetus for the creation of a Task Force that led directly to the formation of the King County Mental Health Court in 1999. The primary reason why this Court has been growing more effective in dealing with mentally ill offenders is that it has increased cooperation between the mental health and criminal justice systems, institutions that have traditionally not worked closely together. Building on the model of the drug court, the mental health court closely monitors compliance with treatment regimens by assembling a team proficient in dealing with the mentally ill and at using the stick of the criminal justice system to make that treatment work. The vast majority of these mentally ill individuals are responsive to treatment.

    This program has progressed well and is becoming an effective means of helping mentally ill offenders, assuring public safety, and running a more cost efficient system. Yet to allow this system to continue to expand in Seattle and other communities in Washington State, as well as to allow other States to begin using these types of programs, federal grant funding is critical. That is what this bill provides.

    Collaboration between mental health, substance abuse, law enforcement, judicial, and other criminal justice personnel is also critical to the success of our mental health court program in Seattle. It is only through full coordination between the criminal justice and the mental health treatment community at the Federal and the local level that these efforts will be successful.

    Similarly, only through full coordination at the Federal and local level will this bill be able to make a critical difference. I believe that some additional improvements can be made to strengthen that critical coordination and I look forward to working with Senator DEWINE and Senator LEAHY to accomplish that goal. I welcome the introduction of this legislation and look forward to working with my cosponsors to make this bill law in the next Congress.