THE REVOLVING JAIL DOOR

Plans For Mentally Ill Inmates Should Focus on Solutions

It's encouraging that Miami-Dade and Broward counties are planning to
improve how their jail systems handle inmates with chronic and severe
mental illnesses. Currently both counties incarcerate about 1,200 mentally
ill inmates daily. These inmates have special needs and cost more to jail
than others. Yet many of them repeatedly return to jail after quitting or
failing underfunded community treatment programs.

The problem is national in scope: County jails and state prisons
incarcerate three times as many inmates with chronic mental illness than
state psychiatric hospitals.

Miami-Dade's innovative plan could provide a cure. It is the brainchild of
Judge Steven Leifman, who runs the county's mental-health project. The plan
would use $22 million in bond money to create a 150-bed jail facility that
will operate more like a treatment center. Once treated and healthy enough,
an inmate would be returned to the community under the close watch of case
managers and treatment providers. The idea is to break the cycle of
repeatedly jailing people who are more mentally ill than criminal. Today,
most such inmates are locked up for minor offenses such as loitering and
public drunkenness.

Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne's plan, still in early development, is more
costly and seems less promising. He proposes to spend some $50 million on a
1,400-bed facility. This approach might only segregate an
already-marginalized mentally ill population without solving the
fundamental problem, which is insufficient community resources for treatment.

Critics fear that either jail plan could undermine efforts to bolster
mental-health treatment programs. But at least South Florida is trying to
address the reality: that jails and prisons have become the biggest
psychiatric asylums, not just in Florida, but nationwide. Local experiments
may well lead the way to spur far-reaching and much-needed reforms.