Texas must stop punting mental health care to the county jails | Editorial
A patient walks down the hallway in the forensic ward at the Terrell State Hospital in Terrell, Texas on April 21, 2016. Industries all over are mired in staffing shortages. But the problems in the state’s network of psychiatric hospitals are particularly distressing, with significant repercussions for patients, county jailers and taxpayers.
On Thursday, almost 400 people in the Dallas County jail were waiting for a bed in a psychiatric hospital. That’s because courts had deemed those inmates incompetent, meaning they weren’t well enough to participate in their defense because of mental illness. Although some have the means to seek treatment at a private facility, most of them have no choice but to go to a state hospital to recover.
The latter has happened with misdemeanor cases. In those circumstances, cases get tossed, and inmates are released from jail. But then they don’t get the health care that could restore them and help them avoid another run-in with the law.
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