Okaloosa County's Mental Health Court

Okaloosa County has a unique diversion program: Mental Health Court.

Mental Health Court addresses a very serious and expensive problem: what do we do with people who have chronic mental health conditions and find themselves getting arrested because they cannot control their behavior?

The normal answer, lock them up in jail or send them for years to state prison, is increasing looked upon as a last resort. Frankly, a growing consensus is leaning towards a more damning indictment - stupid.

The target population is not deterred by incarceration. Probation equals violation. Jail becomes a revolving door. Here is a common example:

John Doe is arrested for trespass at a liquor store after he refuses to leave. Drunk and obnoxious, he is taken to jail and processed. Since he cannot make bond, he stays. Worse, he has to be kept in special housing because he is a management problem, requires expensive medical care including mental health medication, and he will ultimately be sentenced to time already served. He will be medically stable for a short time, but this is temporary. He will be penniless when he is released, run out of medication, and within a few weeks or months, get arrested again.

A normal inmate will cost around fifty dollars ($50) each and every day in jail. (Please spare me the 'make them pay' nonsense - stupid is not the new smart). However, John Doe will cost almost twice that amount and will be arrested twenty to thirty times in his lifetime.

Florida's Mental Health Court is a step in the right direction, however, there is little funding for proper diagnosis and virtually no funding to study the program's effectiveness. Brain imaging based diagnostics would be the most cost effective way to solve this problem, yet once again the powers that be prefer penny wise and pound foolish: the money for a proper diagnosis is never provided and another bandaid measure is the law of the State.

Advanced Plea Bargaining in Florida Criminal Cases.

Advanced Plea Bargaining using SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) brain imaging based Diagnostic Evaluations and Treatment plans. This short video explains something I am deeply passionate about: solving the problem of crime.

Treating the problem of crime is far more effective than jail or prison, whether someone has a prior record or is a first offender seeking mitigation of sentence.

The Smoking Gun

For several years now, I have been asserting that there is a definitive link between mental illness and crime. To recap, repeat offender crime is caused by one of two factors:

1) A small number of repeat offenders have a personality disorder. Think of this as a willful desire to break the law due to bad character.

2) A large number of repeat offenders have mental illnesses that do not qualify for an insanity defense under Florida law, yet affect their behavior and cause criminal behavior.

This second view is very controversial: If criminals are simply “bad characters,” it would justify increasingly harsh punishment. Incarceration would then serve the dual purposes of protection of the public and retribution However, if some criminal are bad characters and others are not, we have a problem: Harsh punishments will not deter the mentally ill, and retribution becomes and act of cruelty.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report published in September of 2006 exposes the level of cruelty - and ignorance – prevalent in our society. While most of the public thinks that harsher punishment is the solution to the social problem of crime – to “teach them a lesson” and other such nonsense, the reality is that we are behaving like prisoners who hurt others without remorse: Our society is quite bluntly put, cruel.

• 45% of federal prisoners have mental health problems.
• 56% of state prisoners have mental health problems.
• 64% of local jail inmates have mental health problems.

This stunning document was produced by the United States government’s own Bureau of Justice, not some “bleeding heart” group. They used professionally accepted definitions and standards:

“Symptoms of a mental disorder were based on criteria specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV).” - Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, page 1, September 2006.

One final thought: The incidence of mental illness was probably understated because many facilities and many inmates refused to participate.