Prison-based capacity-recovery program expands

SAN ANTONIO – A program to assist inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial is expanding. The Center for Health Care Services just received more than $700,000 from the federal government. The goal is to get inmates the help they need without overwhelming the prison system.

The Center for Health Services plans to expand the program to support people on the maximum security prison list and women in the Bexar County Jail. They say women are more likely to suffer from mental illness than men, which is related to physical and sexual trauma they experienced before and during incarceration.

Since the launch of the Jail Based Competency Restoration Program (JBCR) last year, over 200 inmates have been evaluated, 33 have been accepted into the program, and 24 inmates have been restored to competency, representing a 77% recovery rate.

“The average length of stay for these individuals is about 85 days, so instead of continuing to wait in jail, they can obtain a continuation of their court case instead of waiting in jail,” says Monica Torres, medical director of the Adult Justice Program at the Center for Health Care Services.

Torres says her program has saved the county thousands of dollars in taxpayer money. Many of the individuals remain in prison as of 2021.

“Our average stay is 85 days. So if we do the math, we get $6,000 for a person who spends 85 days in a government hospital bed. If we multiply that by the 24 people we've provided a bed to, we can save a lot of taxpayer money,” Torres says.

“We created recovery-themed games and ran various mock trials,” says Annie Cortez, clinical administrator for the Center for Health Care Services. Cortez says they were able to get into the prison facility and identify a missing piece of the prison system to get inmates with mental illness the help they need without clogging up the prison system and potentially saving the county money.

“We help stabilize the mental health symptoms of inmates whose mental health is so bad that they are not fit to stand trial,” says Cortez.

Although the program was able to raise more than $700,000 in federal funding for the expansion, program leaders plan to seek continued county funding in Bexar County District Court in the coming months.