System for handling mental illness needs scrutiny
When the federal grant supporting Dubuque County's Jail Diversion Program ended, the community was supposed to pick up the slack in meeting the needs of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system. Some of those solutions have worked pretty well. But there are gaps that could prove dangerous to individuals and expose the county to risk.
During the three years that the county had the grant, mental health professionals and substance abuse counselors worked with police and sheriff's officials. In the first six months, jail diversion staff assisted 275 times with 207 different people, getting help for individuals instead of placing them in jail. All stakeholders had positive things to say about the collaborative effort.
That's a tough act to follow when the funding goes away.
The federal grant had provided $300,000 per year for the program. When it came to an end in 2006, it coincided with another blow to the mental health community: the Gannon Center closed. Dubuque County Supervisors allotted $72,000 for a community treatment coordinator to keep the system working. No matter how good that coordinator is at his job, it is impossible for one person to take on the entire program.
Nathan Duccini, the corrections department coordinator, said he has seen nearly 100 clients since February 2007, and kept nearly all of them out of jail. That's a great start, but putting one person on this problem is like trying to cover up 10 kids with a baby blanket. It just can't stretch far enough.
The big issue here is that mentally ill individuals don't belong in the county jail. They tend to not function well there and law enforcement officials are not equipped to deal with the individualized regimens that can help keep mentally ill patients stable. And yet, about a third of Iowa's prison inmates are mentally ill, according to a 2006 report by the Iowa Department of Corrections. As many as half of the female inmates have some mental illness diagnosis.