Is it a crime to be mentally ill and/or homeless?
According to some who propose to tackle homelessness, mental illness and crime by expanding the Salt Lake County Jail, it is. Although this sounds like a good idea on the surface, and taxpayers may readily agree to fund it by approving the $507 million bond on the ballot, this so-called solution will likely increase the criminalization of those with serious mental health challenges.
As a long-term professional mental health advocate, I’ve watched this trend of criminalizing the mentally ill steadily increase to the point where those with untreated serious mental illnesses are much more likely to end up in the criminal justice system than in the mental health system.
Our most vulnerable population, the seriously mentally ill — those with delusional and psychotic symptomology often accompanied by anosognosia, which is a lack of insight or awareness of their condition — can end up on our streets and in our jails because the mental health system is not serving them. That’s because many mental health providers consider these folks to be “treatment resistant” and “non-compliant,” and they kick them out of services and behavioral health facilities. Not only are they kicked out of treatment settings and facilities, but some providers have also had them arrested, charged and taken to jail when their psychotic or delusional symptoms are unable to be contained in a treatment setting.
A person with serious mental illness often cannot advocate for themselves due to their condition and, when their loved ones try to advocate and get appropriate treatment and care for their loved one, they are met with resistance — and sometimes contempt — by mental health providers. As a result, individuals with untreated serious mental illnesses are losing their homes, jobs, driver’s license, vehicles, pets, children, marriages and dignity, while family members watch helplessly, without getting any help from the mental health system despite their desperate pleas for help.
Even when someone goes to a hospital instead of jail, the treatment is often too brief to be effective, discharge planning can be minimal and ineffective, and the cycle repeats, usually with increasing symptoms due to the nature of the illness.
The mental health system has dropped the ball and failed to meet the needs of their most vulnerable clients — those with serious mental illness. And the ball has bounced into law enforcement’s and the criminal justice system’s court. That’s why Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said, “The Salt Lake County Jail is the largest mental health provider in the state.”
Is allowing for increased treatment and support of the mentally ill through the proposed jail expansion the right direction to go in? Do we feel comfortable as a society taking the most seriously mentally ill people and putting them in jail with criminal charges to help them? Wouldn’t it be better to put this kind of effort and money into mental health reform, instead of criminal justice reform?
There are ways to provide evidence-based treatment, care and support within the community for the seriously mentally ill. One that immediately comes to mind is AOT — assisted outpatient treatment. Judges could dismiss many cases involving serious mental illness to AOT, not incarceration or probation that will likely be violated due to mental illness. This would help to reduce the current competency crisis in Utah, get people into treatment sooner and get them out of the criminal justice system.
Supported housing is another evidence-based way to divert people to treatment instead of jail.
Why are we not looking at these and other solutions instead of looking to expand the jail and further criminalize the mentally ill?
(Wendy O'Leary) Wendy O'Leary has been a certified family peer support specialist in Utah since 2007.
Wendy O’Leary has been a certified family peer support specialist in Utah since 2007.
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