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Mapping the overlap of mental health and legal systems

By Susy Kelly skelly@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read

People with mental illnesses could be better served by Fayette County’s criminal justice system with better data management, which is one goal professionals from various legal and social service agencies identified to help that population of county residents at a recent workshop.

The cross-systems mapping workshop, held at the Fayette County Behavioral Health Administration, included over 30 representatives from law enforcement, magisterial and county court, the Fayette County Prison, Children and Youth Services, the Crime Victims Center, behavioral and mental health treatment, probation, hospitals, and drug and alcohol treatment.

“It’s not very often you get to sit down together,” remarked Bobby Juip, who, along with Jackie Weaknect, facilitated the day’s discussions. Both women work for the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).

In August 2013, the Pennsylvania Mental Health and Justice Center of Excellence collaborated with Drexel University and the University of Pittsburgh to spend a day in Fayette County working with stakeholders across the spectrum of legal and social services. The purpose was to inform new stakeholders of changes that have occurred between 2010 and 2013, and go over the cross-systems sequential intercept model.

Cross-systems mapping is a way to visually represent the ways in which treatment systems interact with the local justice system, Juip explained. Sequential interception refers to the the order of events when a person with a mental illness first encounters law enforcement, and the step-by-step path that follows.

After identifying areas in which progress was made since the last workshop — such as opening the Day Reporting Center and Central Court, specialty courts for veterans and people with mental illness, and Genesis House for offenders reentering society after incarceration — participants listed those areas in which work needs to be done.

“If there was a computer system to track who’s in jail for what, I could determine who’s eligible for the Day Reporting Center sooner,” said President Judge John F. Wagner Jr. Although the jail collects data about inmates as they come in, the data isn’t shared in a network available to other agencies and offices. Wagner said he’d like to be able to know if an offender is being detained pretrial, or has been sentenced, and about current and previous charges.

A data management system would help track recidivism rates as well, said Jamee Waligura, a counselor at the Fayette County Prison.

A server for the jail’s computer system went down in early December, preventing the release of some inmates for a brief period, and leaving court and security staff in the dark regarding the prison’s population during that time. In adult probation, employees sometimes have to resort to keeping handwritten lists of inmates working with that office. To several workshop participants, that kind of technology failure is indicative of the functioning of the computer system as a whole.

Wagner said he’s been asking for a resolution to the matter for two years, to no avail.

None of the county commissioners were available to attend the workshop, nor was Warden Brian Miller, because of scheduling conflicts.

A second goal the group discussed was the need for more emergency services, law enforcement and corrections personnel to receive crisis intervention training (CIT). There have been two training sessions for CIT and approximately 20 officers in 10 jurisdictions have completed it so far. According to workshop participants, the training has made a positive difference. Another training is scheduled for February.

“This is not ‘hug a thug,'” said Dave Rider, the mental health program director at Fayette County Behavioral Health Administration. “It’s really working for de-escalation.”

One challenge to coordinating CIT, Rider said, is that small departments don’t have operating budgets to make employees available for the 40-hour training. Guy Napolillo, of Fayette County 911, suggested including the 40-hour CIT in with the other 200 hours of training required for new 911 dispatchers.

Another priority issue the workshop attendees identified was the need for more release and reentry planning for people with mental health issues who are coming out of jail. Housing was a concern shared by several attendees, as was vocational training. Securing housing and employment prior to or shortly after release would be helpful in reducing recidivism, participants said.

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