The Minnesota Legislative Auditor’s office released a highly critical report Thursday on the state of mental health services within the county jail system.
The report detailed a lack of training and resources for correctional workers — and noted that state laws didn’t adequately address those issues. Worse, existing state laws weren’t being complied with — this, despite most sheriffs saying that inmates should have better access to psychiatric services. Though the report noted there is inadequate tracking of inmates who are mentally ill, county sheriffs put that estimate at about a third of the total prisoner population.
While many of those are given priority at state psychiatric hospitals, those hospitals have suffered significant staffing reductions, the report noted. “As a State we have hit crisis levels for untreated mental illness,” Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek testified Thursday at a legislative hearing on the report. “We are telling you today, and our Office of the Legislative Auditor is telling you too, that Minnesota’s County Jails have become de facto warehouses for the mentally ill, because there simply are not enough beds, community placement options, stabilization facilities, or arrest alternatives.” Stanek, who is president of the Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association, stressed three points in his testimony: Those with mental illness stay jailed far longer than inmates who do not suffer from mental illness.
Those with mental illness often stay longer than the sentence for their underlying crime. Inmates with mental illness do not get better while they stay in a County Jail, often they get worse. The auditor recommended that the Legislature give more funding to state psychiatric hospitals. State law does not require jails to do any sort of mental health assessment of inmates, which the report suggests, along with training staff to give prescribed anti-psychotic medications to inmates who are uncooperative. The report also noted that those deemed too incompetent to stand trial often spent time in jail while courts decide whether to civilly commit them, a violation of state law. The auditor recommended the Legislature create a special commitment process for those cases.
Governor Mark Dayton later responded to the report saying: “I think we have a crisis in our whole mental health system, starting with those who are in jails and the lack of … capacity.” The governor will proposes changes to address the “crisis” for this Legislature, which begins its 2016 session on March 8. “They’re expensive. It’s not money I would prefer to spend over early childhood or something, but it’s money that I believe we absolutely have to spend.”