One of my main
duties is to run three jail facilities in Palm Beach County.
I take great
pride in making sure all of our inmates are treated with respect and fairness
while they await trial or serve their sentences.
This is
especially true for those suffering from mental illness.
There are as
many as 400-600 people with psychological disorders in our jails at any given
time, constituting as much as 20 percent of the estimated 2,800 daily inmate
population. We have a full-time staff of psychiatrists, nurses and social
workers who provide counseling and medication to treat illnesses such as
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Our jails have
become Palm Beach County’s largest mental health institution, where my staff
cares for more mentally ill people than any of our local hospitals, halfway
houses and clinics combined. Most of these inmates are repeat offenders who
come in and out of our jails every year, often for committing minor crimes such
as shoplifting or disorderly conduct.
It often costs
us two to three times the amount to send a mentally ill person through the
criminal justice system as compared to treating the same person outside the
system. At roughly $120 a day, taxpayers must pick up the costs for feeding,
housing and medicating an inmate with mental illness, as well as pay the
salaries of everyone from corrections deputies and psychiatrists to public
defenders and judges.
I’m working to
change this seemingly endless cycle, not just because it’s so expensive and
time consuming, but also because it’s the right thing to do. These individuals
are our relatives and neighbors. They are people we see every day in our
communities. They deserve to be treated humanely and cared for in the right
environment.
Here’s what I
am doing as your Sheriff to reform our system:
First, the
Sheriff’s Office is working more closely than ever with our community partners
to divert and treat the mentally ill before they are booked in our jails. For
nonviolent, mentally ill inmates in our facilities, we work with the courts to
move many of them out of the jails and into long-term care facilities in
community settings where they can successfully overcome barriers upon
reentering society.
Second, we are
training our corrections and road deputies to better recognize signs of mental
illness and steer people in need of psychological help to hospitals and clinics
rather than to our jails. So far, nearly 600 of our 2,200 certified officers
have completed a national training program known as Critical Incident Training,
or CIT, which provides skills, knowledge and perspective in dealing with
critical events involving people with mental illness.
Third, our
Behavior Services Unit is expanding its follow-up to mental health-related
crime cases in our community. Our staff of deputies and certified social
workers assists families in finding the right resources and treatment for their
loved ones with psychological problems who have had brushes with law enforcement.
These are
best-practices identified by our accreditation agencies and other experts to
divert the mentally ill from detention facilities and the criminal justice
system. Because, as we know, once they're in our system, they stay in for a
long time.
Please don’t
think that this is an issue unique to Palm Beach County.
Jails from
Maine to California are housing the mentally ill largely because they have
nowhere else to go. It’s part of the legacy of our country’s
deinstitutionalization of mental health facilities. Since the 1960s, fewer
individuals with psychological disorders are supervised by health care workers.
Many are left to their own devices in maintaining their personal medication
regimens.
I firmly
believe that we must be at our best when caring for needy people at their worst
moments. That’s why I am such an advocate for providing appropriate mental
health counseling and medication, as well as for collaborating with our outside
partners, to make sure we do all we can for our most vulnerable residents.
Ric Bradshaw
is the Palm Beach County Sheriff.
