Wednesday, November 10, 1999
Court for mentally ill offenders advocated
Judicial officials at seminar told treatment is lacking
BY RANDY McNUTT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — Creating special mental health courts will help local governments better handle a growing number of disturbed people in the criminal justice system.
That was the point made by speakers at the Southwest Ohio Regional Forum on Mental Health Courts and the Mentally Ill Offender, held Tuesday at Miami University Hamilton.
About 250 people attended, including mental health workers and police officials.
“The response to this kind of program is an indication that I'm not the only one who has heard the cry: "Somebody help me,'” said Randy T. Rogers, presiding judge of Butler County's probate and drug courts.
Butler County is preparing its own mental health court, which officials hope eventually will become an outgrowth of the drug court. About $370,000 in operating money has been pledged by the state, and more is expected from other sources.
U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, supports proposed legislation that would make grants available to counties that want to create mental health diversion courts. They would redirect nonviolent, mentally ill, petty offenders out of jail and into treatment.
Seminar speakers said that option is needed nationally because 13 percent of the 10 million people arrested each year suffer from severe mental disabilities. About 685,000 people are detained in jail with serious mental illnesses — eight times the number admitted to state hospi tals, said John R. Staup, executive director of the Butler County Mental Health Board.
“There's something wrong with this picture,” he said.
Though Butler County's criminal justice system treats the mentally ill better than do many other communities, he said, improvement is necessary.
“We've known how to do this (deal more effectively with the mentally ill) for years,” he said. “We just haven't found the wherewithal to do it.”
Several years ago, officials in Broward County, Fla., established a special mental health court.
Judge Mark A. Speiser, one of Tuesday's speakers, said many times the mentally ill were picked up by police and taken to jail for minor offenses. He said education has helped police and others in the system become more sensitive.
“My frustration was: Who to call? How to deal with these people?” he said. “I did not want them to become a part of merry-go-round justice. As a former federal and state prosecutor, I used to be under the impression that you lock up everybody and throw away the key. But gradually, I changed. I realized that it's easy to be tough, but tough to be fair.”
Another speaker, Michael F. Elwell, mental health services coordinator for the 17th Judicial Circuit Court in Broward County, said the criminal-justice atmosphere was volatile before the mental health court was established.
Among many strategies, the court has a computer link between the jail and a mental health provider so that mental health workers can check names of defendants against their client roster. If a client's name appears on the list, a caseworker could visit the jail, he said.
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