Support Continued Funding for the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment Act - 2006
by Government Relations Staff
Members of Congress are urged to support $15 million in funding in FY 2007 for the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 ("the Act").
• With Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) and Representative Ted Strickland (D-OH) as lead sponsors, the Act garnered widespread bipartisan support in both chambers and was signed into law by President Bush on October 30, 2004.
• The Act authorizes $50 million in federal grants to help states and local communities fund collaborative efforts between the criminal justice, mental health and juvenile justice systems aimed at reducing the criminalization of people with mental disorders.
• Congress appropriated $5 million for FY 2006 under the administration of the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Affairs (BJA) to implement this important program. Continued and even expanded funding, however, is needed to enable this program to realize its full potential and to permit meaningful evaluation of its effectiveness.
• To implement this program, BJA plans to request applications for grants in early March, and is planning to award approximately $3.8 million in both planning and implementation grants.
Continued and even expanded funding is needed in FY 2007 because the nation's jails and juvenile detention facilities have become de facto mental health treatment facilities.
• According to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1999, 16% of adults in contact with the justice system suffered from a mental disorder, 70% of whom had been convicted of a non-violent offense.
• DOJ's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention also reported finding a high rate of mental disorders among children within the juvenile justice system, with more than 20% suffering from serious mental health problems.
• Incarceration is the most costly way to deal with a non-violent offender with a mental disorder. The Act provides assistance to states and communities to mount new programs or expand existing programs that can both reduce costs and help these offenders return to productive lives.
Funding for this program is consistent with the findings and recommendations of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
• The Commission in its final report, Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America (2003), found that when they are put in jail, people with mental disorders frequently do not receive appropriate mental health services, nor when they re-enter the community following their discharge. As a result, the Commission found these individuals quickly recycle back into the justice system.
• The Commission noted the importance of keeping adults and youth with mental disorders who are not criminals out of the criminal justice system in the first place.
• Accordingly, the Commission recommended the widespread adoption of adult criminal justice and juvenile justice jail diversion and community re-entry programs to avoid the criminalization and extended incarceration of non-violent adult and juvenile offenders with mental disorders, and recognized these programs as emerging best practices.
Additional funding for this program will help reduce the criminalization of non-violent offenders with mental disorders.
• Continuing and even expanding this program will enable the Department of Justice to administer grants to states and local communities for a broad variety of purposes, including: mental health courts; jail diversion, alternative prosecution, and sentencing programs; treatment for incarcerated individuals with mental disorders; community reentry services; and cross-training of criminal justice, juvenile justice, and mental health personnel. It also will give DOJ the resources to study more broadly the effectiveness of these programs.
• The Act builds upon the previous DeWine/Strickland mental health courts program, America's Law Enforcement and Mental Health Project (P.L. 106-515), enacted in 2000. That program enabled the Department of Justice to provide 37 grants in 2002 and 2003, totaling approximately $5.5 million in 29 different states. These two-year grants, averaged approximately $150,000 per site, helping states and local communities across the country launch new mental health courts, and helping existing mental health courts add key components to their programs. In 2006, DOJ will provide one more federal grant for an additional mental health court.
• State and community interest in these types of programs is clearly evident. A recent survey conducted by the Council of State Governments found that the number of mental health courts across the nation steadily has been increasing to a current total of 113.
MIOTCRA.pdf
(105.00 Kb)
