CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

'Thousands of mentally ill' locked up in Erie County jails, new report says

Buffalo News (NY) - 4/14/2015

April 14--The second series of reports documenting conditions inside Erie County's jails in Buffalo and Alden show that while the county has made progress in treating people with mental health conditions, it lacks a strategy to deal with the revolving door of mentally ill offenders moving in and out of confinement, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"After years of neglect and abuse in Erie County's jails, as well as costly litigation, the county has clearly adopted serious reforms to the way it handles the people it incarcerates who have mental illness," said Corey Stoughton, the Civil Liberties Union's senior staff attorney, who worked to release the reports of court-appointed monitors for public view.

"But these reports," she added, "also illustrate the severity of the problem -- thousands of people with mental illness are locked up in jail in Erie County every year. People shouldn't have to go to jail to get mental health care, but that's what is happening in Erie County."

Jails nationwide began seeing huge influxes of inmates with serious mental illnesses in the latter half of the 20th century, as states closed their large mental hospitals. Erie County, like some others in New York, instituted a "mental health court," where a judge can direct prisoners into treatment to dispose of their cases. The county also is looking at reinstituting a local parole board, called a "conditional release" commission, to free nonviolent offenders from the Alden jail before their sentences are up if they enter treatment programs. A number of police departments are training officers in "crisis intervention," to identify people committing crimes because they are mentally ill and to steering them into treatment.

The Civil Liberties Union won release of the reports by a health care monitor and a mental health care monitor following a two-year legal battle with Erie County. The mental health care monitor's documents became accessible to the public in recent days. The health care reports were available in March.

For years, Erie County aggressively resisted investigations and subsequent legal challenges by the state and federal government regarding inhumane and unconstitutional conditions at its two facilities. Investigations and legal complaints initiated by the U.S. Justice Department and the State Commission of Correction leveled allegations of inadequate medical care, violent treatment by prison personnel and poor efforts to protect suicidal inmates.

A two-year investigation by the Justice Department found evidence of staff-inmate violence and sexual misconduct between staff and inmates, along with an inadequate monitoring system to prevent suicide at the facilities. Since 2003, 10 inmates have committed suicide at both sites, and at least 16 additional inmates have attempted it.

In 2012, the Civil Liberties Union sued the county for the public release of compliance reports filed every six months. The reports stemmed from a 2009 lawsuit filed by the Justice Department'sCivil Rights Division. The reports are filed by physicians hired to monitor the county's compliance with reforms.

"The county has clearly made significant strides in its response to people with mental illness while they are incarcerated, but that falls apart when they are leaving jail," Stoughton said. "The reports suggest a lack of investment in discharge planning, and the high rates of mental illness among people admitted to the jails suggests that people suffer from lack of access to services on the outside, are re-arrested, and get locked up again.

"The bottom line is that jails are an expensive and ineffective way to treat the mentally ill. The county needs to start looking at solutions that divert people suffering from mental illness away from the criminal justice system and into effective treatment programs."

email: mspina@buffnews.com

___

(c)2015 The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.)

Visit The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.) at www.buffalonews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC