Background -
In Harris County we are putting together a two-day seminar for prosecutors and defense counsel essentially focused on procedural issues in dealing with the mentally impaired defendant. In truth, we are less interested in the felon than misdemeanants -- and "frequent flyers", persons with multiple misdemeanor arrests and multiple contacts with MH treatment facilities.

Question -
As seen across the state, what topics need to be addressed that bog down disposition? (Shannon spoke at a similar seminar as early as 2003.)

CCP provides at least a way for magistrates to get folks with mental illness out of the jail situation early on with personal bond and treatment. Even if you have decent treatment available in jail, prolonged incarceration of pre-trial, mentally ill persons seems to create issues that complicate disposition.

The personal bond provision does assume you have the ability to screen and treat these folks, and that they have somewhere to go that will be supportive of the treatment. Statewide, I personally think that is still a work in progress.

Just my two cents.

Do you have any idea when that seminar will be?

I have to move quickly, but we anticipate either March or the second quarter.

Discuss the proper way of handling this situation:

Defendant found incompetent and sent for inpatient treatment. Competence restored, and defendant returned to county of origin. Trial court does not make competency determination within normal time limits, defendant runs out of his good meds from Vernon and gets put on the regular stuff. Defendant decomps. What's next? How do we avoid it?

That is an all too familiar refrain. And, as you are aware, this is not the forum for a lengthy or complicated response, though both are necessary.

In the short run, we have an .084 hearing and re-commit under the H&S rules, and Subchapter E, if charges are not dismissed.

In the long run, we establish a clerk/task force within court administration that tracks all criminal commitments, when they return, the opinion of Vernon, and advises the court of the time line -- so errors are less frequent.

Secondly, we establish a training program for ADA's and mental health defense specialists to train both sides of the house viz. procedurally and practically how to deal with these cases.

Thirdly, before doing either (1) or (2), we have a stakeholders meeting of the presiding judge, trial court judges, MHMRA, county commissioners representative, and representative from the sheriff to agree on (1) and (2).

That's a short response. The truly long response is that we pull Texas out of the bottom rung of all the states viz. our per capita funding for MH services -- by convincing the legislature that it costs a heck of a lot more to deal with them in the CJ system.

[This message was edited by Floyd L. Jennings on 01-22-08 at .]

The real answer is for the State of Texas to have a statutory duty to accept and treat incompetent criminal defendants within a certain time frame or pay the county for the costs. Counties faced this same problem when prisons were overcrowded and inmates got backed up in county jails. The counties sued and negotiated a settlement that included legislation that required the State to accept an inmate within 45 days of being paper ready or pay the county for the cost of ongoing confinement. That solution has worked rather well.

The State will never fund sufficient bed space and treatment so long as they can set artificial quotas, impose them on the county and have all consequences (financial and mental) fall on the counties and individuals with mental health problems.

John you may be quite correct, and you are absolutely correct that the solution is political -- and will depend upon a coalition of legistators from not merely the big counties, but the smaller ones that bear an enormous burden when there are no resources available.

I only wish that these same politicians would realize that providing such a solution would, ultimately, save money, by stopping the revolving door in and out of mental health facilities and overuse of prison beds as mental health facilities.

We just dealt with a case involving 50 hospitalizations and 22 misdemeanor arrests, whom I found to be mentally retarded and finally arranged a MR commitment! The courts were elated. But as you know, we have three dedicated psych units in TDCJ, Montford, Skyview and Jester IV, and thousands on outpatient care...and those are just the felons..