Missouri residents spend an average of one year in jail while awaiting court-ordered mental health treatment • Missouri Independent

The number of people languishing in Missouri prisons requiring court-ordered psychiatric treatment currently stands at 344 – and the average wait time for a hospital bed is one year.

That's an increase of 254 people from the same period last year, according to data from the Missouri Department of Mental Health provided to The Independent. A spokeswoman for the agency said the number of people waiting for treatment in prisons would continue to rise because the agency's bed capacity was full.

Debra Walker, a spokeswoman for the department, said February was the first month in which the number of people waiting exceeded 300.

None of the people on the waiting list have been convicted of a crime. They have been arrested, declared incompetent to stand trial, and sentenced by the court to psychiatric treatment. This process is called rehabilitation and typically involves therapy and medication.

“W“We want to increase the number of people whose sanity is restored,” said Jeanette Simmons, deputy division chief of the Missouri Department of Mental Health's Division of Behavioral Health, during a meeting of the Mental Health Commission earlier this month. “We have a growing number of people waiting for these services.”

Missouri has struggled with this problem for years due to an increasing number of remand cases, staffing issues, and limited capacity at psychiatric hospitals. The situation has worsened in the last year.

Lawmakers this year approved $300 million for the Department of Mental Health to open a new hospital in Kansas City, but it could take about five Years before construction is completed.

In addition, state authorities are working to implement the “Restoration of Sanity in Prison” program, which the legislature approved this year in response to this problem. This year's budget allocates $2.5 million to establish skills programs in prisons in St. Louis, St. Louis County, Jackson County, Clay County and Greene County.

Prison rehabilitation services include room and board and medical care for ten places in each prison, contracted staff from a local mental health organization, and mental health care provided by “mobile team practitioners.”

The department is currently training two employees in Kansas City who will provide treatment in county jails. Clay County has a “tentative start date” of September, Simmons said.

“So we're really excited about that and the launch because we believe we need a multi-faceted approach to achieve those numbers,” she said.

Simmons said the agency has mobile medical teams in county jails that prescribe medications “to try to get people the medications they need to stabilize their mental illness.” The department works with local health officials as well as prison psychiatric or medical staff, she said, to get people services.

The Health Department is also trying to provide the courts with information about outpatient rehabilitation for those who can be safely treated in the community and do not require hospital care. A Law A law passed this year gives the agency the authority to provide outpatient treatment to certain arrested individuals.

“Sometimes I think the courts don't really consider that as an option,” Simmons said of outpatient treatment. “This is something completely new.”

Lawsuits have been filed in other states, including some that border Missouri, over similarly long wait times, arguing that they violate individuals' due process rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

A federal lawsuit filed last year in Oklahoma allegedly Prisons hold patients for three months to a year. proposed agreement The benchmark was set at a maximum waiting time of 60 days and the ultimate goal was to reach 21 days, but the governor opposed this.

A lawsuit filed in Kansas in 2022 allegedly that the people are imprisoned longer and have to wait longer for a place in a psychiatric hospital than if they had been convicted. Many of the charges relate to minor crimes, national Investigations found.

County sheriffs and prison administrators in Missouri have raised alarm about the difficulty of caring for people held in pretrial detention, and state officials have acknowledged that the long wait times contribute to mental deterioration.

The Missouri Sheriffs' Association recently published an edition of its Missouri Jails Magazine The report focused on the handling of mental health issues in county jails and cited several examples of local problems, including one county spending $30,000 to keep a suspect under 24-hour surveillance for two months because there were no spaces available in closed medical centers.

Some county sheriffs are looking to build or expand jails to combat the problem, according to the magazine. Among other things, they want to increase the number of solitary cells to keep people with mental illnesses away from the general population. Others have signed contracts with private health care providers. Turnkey health Clinics should provide improved psychiatric care while people wait to be transferred.

“While psychologists and politicians are trying to find solutions to the crisis,” writes magazine writer Michael Feeback, “sheriffs and other agencies are searching for answers themselves.”