Mentally ill need treatment, not jail

WWLP TV

Updated: Feb 2, 2012 5:46 PM

BOSTON, Mass. (WWLP) — Law enforcement officers say they’re trained to arrest, not handle people with mental illness.  They’re joining mental health advocates to say that needs to change, in lieu of the staggering number of people in jail suffering from mental illness.

“The incidence of people who are incarcerated who have mental illness is high enough that we know that there’s a significant problem,” said the Association for Behavioral Healthcare President Vicker DiGravio III.

According to the Massachusetts Sheriffs Association, 42 percent of inmates in the county jail system have a form of mental illness and 26 percent have major mental illness.

“It’s really not the appropriate response for these folks,” said Framingham Deputy Police Chief Craig Davis.  “They don’t belong in a jail cell.  It’s just a waste of resources, there’s nothing that ever comes as a result of it.  The person isn’t offered any treatment.”

A coalition of officers and advocates want better training and integration between police and community-based mental health services.  They’re requesting that the Legislature spend $3 million a year on grants that provide such services to cities and towns.

In the Berkshires, mental health advocates say pilot officer training programs are working. “The police have told us that they’re putting a lot more people into community base and even at Berkshire Medical Center, which has a psychiatric unit.  So a lot more people who would have been arrested and gone into jail are now going into the brain center and into their system, which is a much more appropriate setting,” said the Executive Director Laurie Martinelli, the executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Advocates say diverting people with mental illness from the court system and toward psychiatric emergency programs will save the state money by reducing jail populations and giving proper treatment to those that need it.

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