U.S. prisons and jails incarcerate a disproportionate amount of people who have a current or past mental health problem, according to the organization The Prison Policy Initiative. The organization believes that facilities are not meeting the demand for treatments.
St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell joined KMOX alongside Scott Anders, director of the Department of Justice Services, and Danielle Smith, director of the county's diversion unit, to talk about the issue. Bell said that in St. Louis County — and across the nation — 40% of incarcerated people deal with mental health issues.
Anders said the St. Louis County jail received a MacArthur grant to fund a process that would analyze the population of the jail to see how people could be released.
"We have behavioral health resources, providing assessments at the intake process, so that even if people post bond, they can get connected to mental health resources," Anders said. "And we have a process now, the Department of Mental Health is sending a mobile unit to provide medication and treatment for the most chronically in need."
They've also recently proposed a diversion center, which would try to make sure people could get the help that they need before they go into jail. That diversion center, Smith explained, would help figure out what people's needs are, and would potentially have things like short term crisis beds, integrated care and individualized treatment plans.
"The challenge with mental health is that folks are not coming into the jail with a mark that says, 'I have mental health issues,'" Bell said. "Many of these issues are undiagnosed, and we're talking about the history of certain individuals. There's never been a diagnosis for some of these people. So it's a challenge for jail staff and any and all of the stakeholders in the criminal justice system."
Bell, Smith and Anders talked with KMOX about the problems with the current system of psychological and mental health evaluations, and how reforms could help those struggling with mental illness. Listen to their full interview from Total Information AM:
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