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Legislature's underinvestment in competency restoration beds creates havoc for mentally ill jail inmates, county jails

By Gritsforbreakfast

The 80th Texas Legislature failed to fix the crisis, so mentally ill defendants who're declared incompetent to stand trial are still locked up in county jails in record numbers.Por ejemplo, the Austin Statesman's Andrea Ball has a fine piece profiling the case of Daniel Whitehead, a schizophrenic/bipolar defendant arrested for allegedly forging a check. He was declared incompetent because of his mental state and spent 106 days in the already-full Travis County Jail waiting for a bed at the Austin State Hospital to open up. Reported Ball ("Mentally ill people's care falling to jails, emergency rooms in Austin," Feb. 6):Since November, at least 125 depressed, suicidal or violent people have been sent to emergency rooms. Previously, most of those people would have gone to the state hospital, said Dr...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on February 04, 2008 (boomark / email).