Two major recent efforts are aiming to reform for D.C. inmates who are homeless and mentally ill.
First, in April of this year, a jail diversion program for the mentally ill called Options Plus was proposed by DC Prisoners’ Legal Services and funded by Councilman Catania, who added 1.5 million to the Department of Mental Health (DMH) budget for Options Plus and prerelease case management at the D.C. Jail.
Options plus would expand the current Options initiative, a DMH pretrial mental health program run with the assistance of the Public Defenders Service.
Options provides housing, medical assistance, and court advocacy for 100 mentally ill people in trouble with the law. The proposed Options Plus would serve an additional 200 to 300 people, with the hope of halting ‘the spiraling and unnecessary costs of arrest, prosecution and incarceration of people” who need mental health services, and the program’s Helen Bergman.
The cost-effectiveness of the full-blown OptionsPlus program has been questioned by DMH and its implementation is currently under DMH review. Partial implementation, however, would undermine the success of this wraparound program, which features aggressive treatment and intensive case management services, DC Prisoners’ Legal Services’ Mike Berler said at the June 29 hearing.
DMH has also proposed to help people with mental illnesses and substance abuse disorders caught up in the criminal justice system through a four-point program that has some features already in place, and other presently in development.
The proposed DMH program will be jointly run by DMH, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and the Department of Corrections (DOC) in a “collaborative process,” according to Linda Grant, a public affairs specialist in the office of Director Marti Knisley.
“DMH is using the opportunity to develop the mental health criminal justice expansion. The four aspects of this initiative – pre-booking, post-booking, in-jail services, and post-release services – will incorporate the Options program and [Options] will be one element of the post-booking jail diversion services. The [new] finds will be used to support the full initiative.
The four components of the program are:
- A Pre-Booking Jail Diversion project. In cooperation with the MPD, this project will focus on reducing the arrests f persons with mental illness. It will employ a Homeless Outreach Team that works in cooperation with the Police Department to get mentally ill homeless people into treatment and housing. Currently, the Team consists of six people led by Michele May and is based in the D.C. general campus.
- Post-Booking Jail Diversion. This component is examining the effectiveness of the options program and formulating recommendations.
- In-Jail Services. DMH will expand D.C. Jail and CTF staffing devoted to pre-release planning and coordination of post-release services. DMH is currently “fast-tracking” the jail staff hiring process, now in its early stages.
- DMH will also develop a consortium of local providers committed to serving persons being diverted from or released from jail.
