As Bexar County’s jail inhabitants continues to pressure beneath the load of untreated psychological sickness and substance use, native officers are weighing a unique strategy: diverting some folks away from incarceration and straight into therapy earlier than they change into entrenched within the justice system.
Final month, San Antonio Metropolis Council’s Public Security Committee superior a Council Consideration Request filed by Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) calling for a joint city-county advert hoc committee to discover a centralized diversion and restoration system. The proposal, which incorporates supporting a feasibility research for a possible diversion heart, is ready to be briefed throughout a Feb. 11 Metropolis Council B Session.
The dialogue comes as there’s mounting strain on the Bexar County Jail, the place Sheriff Javier Salazar has repeatedly mentioned the ability has change into a de facto psychological well being supplier for a whole bunch of people that don’t have to be incarcerated.
On the identical time, the area’s psychological well being authority, the Heart for Well being Care Companies, has warned that gaps in early evaluation and therapy are pushing folks deeper into the system — usually with worse outcomes.
To raised perceive what a diversion heart may imply for the jail, public security and entry to care, the San Antonio Report sat down with Sheriff Salazar and CHCS President and CEO Jelynne LeBlanc-Jamison. They mentioned the place the present system breaks down, how diversion may ease strain on the jail, and why persevering with to depend on incarceration to handle behavioral well being crises is unsustainable.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
For readers listening to about this for the primary time, what’s a diversion heart? How wouldn’t it change what occurs in the present day when somebody with psychological sickness will get arrested?
Leblanc-Jamison: It’s an alternative choice to jail for individuals who reside with psychological well being or substance use points, who get engaged with regulation enforcement and so they have violated low-level occasions like prison trespassing, and our legal guidelines have guidelines about that. And so, you lead regulation enforcement with no different possibility, however to convey them to jail.
Different communities have choices like diversion facilities and they’re therapeutic alternate options to jail, in order that these people can voluntarily select to go to them. They will make a selection: jail or diversion, and start therapy on the proper time. It avoids our sheriff having to run the most important psychological well being hospital in South Texas, that’s what it can do.
Salazar: I’m a fan of the idea. I can inform you at any given time we’ve obtained a number of hundred people who don’t have to be right here. I’m of the opinion that we don’t essentially want a brand new jail, we have to make higher use of the jail house we’ve, and it begins with getting folks out of right here that don’t have to be right here.
The place is the present system breaking down and why are so many individuals with behavioral well being wants nonetheless ending up in jail as an alternative of care?
Leblanc-Jamison: Bexar County not too long ago made selections to take away CHCS from the evaluation course of at jail consumption. We had a possibility within the jail for us to evaluate people and authorize them for companies in an outpatient setting. However Bexar County Commissioner’s Court docket not too long ago made that call to cease that exercise. Mainly making the choice to maintain everybody in jail.
One would actually should query their values at that time. Previous to Oct. 1, CHCS was current and we might make a whole bunch of suggestions for diversions and fewer than 100 can be authorised, so it was already a damaged system earlier than Oct. 1. It’s much more damaged in the present day, as a result of nobody is being diverted for therapy.
Only a few people obtain diversion. In case you are eligible for a private recognizance bond, you would possibly get out. If not, you’re saved in jail. It provides to the nervousness of these people dwelling with psychological well being issues whereas including to the pressures that the sheriff’s division has to handle, given the jail inhabitants.
What would a diversion heart change contained in the jail by way of inhabitants strain, medical pressure and security for employees and inmates?
Salazar: As soon as any individual enters the system and has been by the Justice of the Peace course of, they’re caught in jail. And if we don’t discover out about their psychological well being wants till a number of days, weeks, possibly even months into their keep, it’s an issue.
It’s tougher to undo what has already been accomplished at that time. It simply stands to purpose that if you happen to get a diversion level very early in that course of, somebody can say, ‘This individual doesn’t have any enterprise even being magistrated. Let’s determine a method to get them elsewhere.’ Then they by no means enter the system within the first place and we’re capable of make higher use of that jail house that they might have occupied. Not solely that however from a human rights perspective, we get these people diverted off to one thing that’s extra acceptable to no matter their wants are.
For individuals who imagine the reply to public security is extra arrests and longer jail time, what’s your response?
Leblanc-Jamison: As a rustic, we’ve compelled regulation enforcement to unravel all of our points each time there’s somebody out of kinds or not following the norms, we put it on regulation enforcement to unravel it. That’s unfair and so they don’t have all of the sources to try this and locking them up in jail is just not the reply, have a look at the state jail system. They’ve taken over our state hospital system as a result of they’re transferring people out of our prisons right into a hospital setting to attempt to restore their psychological well being.
Simply the information alone exhibits that this has not labored for us, and we have to help regulation enforcement by figuring out these people that want therapy and get them into therapy and never counting on regulation enforcement to unravel all of it. Which they don’t seem to be employed or educated to unravel it’s not honest. It’s time for us to embrace it and recover from the stigma and create techniques and entry to care so folks can get the therapy that they deserve.
Salazar: The people who say, ‘I wish to be robust on crime,’ overlook that this isn’t a jail. It is a jail. It’s momentary housing, a short lived cease off level.
Bexar County has been accused of being gentle on crime for a while but when that had been the case, our jail wouldn’t be busting on the seams proper now. We wouldn’t be housing out in two further county jails within the state whereas on the lookout for a 3rd and possibly a fourth in some unspecified time in the future if we don’t change the best way we’re doing issues.
It’s not a matter of being robust or not robust on crime, It’s working smarter with the sources we’ve in entrance of us. If the one software you’ve got in your toolbox is a hammer, then fairly quickly the complete world begins to appear like a nail.
I do know, that sounds very kitschy to say, but it surely’s the reality. You’ve obtained to have a couple of strategy, locking everyone up and throwing away the important thing doesn’t work.
For instance, attending to the foundation of why an individual is doing what they do? Oh possibly, they’re a veteran with extreme post-traumatic stress dysfunction and so they’re off their meds. Properly, then there’s a greater approach of dealing with that particular person than simply locking them up and throwing the important thing away.
If we hold warehousing human beings, like we’re compelled to do, as a result of there’s few choices then, yeah, dangerous issues are going to occur. Your suicides are going to go up, your medical incidents are gonna go up or you will get smarter on issues and understand that jail is just not essentially the most acceptable setting for everyone and higher outcomes will begin occurring for us.
What can be the most important problem, danger or mistake you would see with this strategy?
Leblanc-Jamison: Not investing in it will be the most important mistake.
Salazar: The danger is to maintain doing what we’re doing and never altering something. We obtained a jail once more that’s bursting on the seams. Each commissioner’s courtroom assembly there’s all the time discuss of both additional time or the price to deal with out inmates in different jails, and I’m sitting right here saying, ‘each of these issues would go away if we’d cease counting on the jail to repair all of society’s points.’
