SAVE MONEY, CUT CRIME; TREAT THE MENTALLY ILL

It's stupid to recycle mentally ill people through Florida's criminal
justice system when, for millions less, they could receive effective
treatment that cuts the crime rate.

Florida spends about $250 million per year on 1,700 "forensic
treatment beds" to basically warehouse people who are mentally
incompetent to stand trial. The cost will keep going up. Department of
Children and Families Secretary Bob Butterworth, whose department is
required to deal with this problem, says, "Of all the money I've ever
asked for in my political life, this is the most useless I've ever had
to ask for." Mr. Butterworth has spent 35 years in public life.

It's "useless" because the patients generally are held until minimal
treatment makes them technically "competent," at which point they
usually reach a deal. After that, they are sentenced to time served,
go back out on the streets with no more treatment and almost
immediately get back in trouble with the law. Now Mr. Butterworth, a
former sheriff, legislator, judge and state attorney general, has
endorsed a program that he thinks will require him to ask for much
less "useless" money. This week, the Florida House agreed with him.

The plan largely is the work of Miami-Dade County Judge Steven
Leifman, who serves as a special adviser on criminal justice and
mental health to the Florida Supreme Court. The House has agreed to
spend $8 million for experimental programs in Escambia, Broward and
Miami-Dade counties that will provide continuing treatment and
supervision for people who previously would have been "kicked out the
door." The initial goal, which may take years, is to convert 300 of
the "forensic treatment beds" to the new treatment system, with
savings projected at $48 million.

Before society became more enlightened about mental illness, Judge
Leifman notes, many mentally ill people ended up in jail. Mental
hospitals replaced jails but failed from lack of expertise and money.
"Two hundred years have passed," Judge Leifman says, "and the jails
once again are the primary place" for holding the mentally ill. Mr.
Butterworth's predecessor, under orders from then-Gov. Bush, refused a
court order to release mentally ill inmates from the Pinellas County
jail.

The number of people declared unfit to stand trial has doubled in five
years. Treating them the old way, as Mr. Butterworth and Judge Leifman
say, is "literally insane." Now, the Senate needs to join the Florida
House in a long-overdue demonstration of sanity.