Jail diversion an alternative for offenders with mental health issues 

YAKIMA, Wash. — Haunted by memories of a time she thought she'd forgot, Torie Harding began drinking.

"I didn't know what was happen-ing to me," she said of memories she didn't want to discuss. "It was like I was living the past all over again and I didn't know how to handle it."

Her drinking led to her being jailed twice last year on domestic violence charges after she allegedly hit her brother. Then, she became separated from her husband and two children and lost her rental home in Yakima.

Later, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Her drinking continued and she moved from one motel to another without telling her probation officer, a probation violation.

Rather than being jailed a third time, Harding entered a diversion program in Yakima that allows misdemeanor offenders suffering from mental illness to get help rather than be locked up.

She is just one of more than 40 people currently in the program run by Comprehensive Mental Health and Yakima County.

Law enforcement officers can take suspects accused of committing misdemeanor crimes, such as public intoxication, trespassing or shoplifting, to a 16-bed triage center at 402 S. Fourth Ave.

There, people are assessed and offered treatment for substance abuse and mental illness. If the person complies with the terms of diversion, the misdemeanor charge is dropped.

The program -- one of only two in the state -- not only saves the judicial system money by keeping these offenders out of jail and courts, but also helps them improve their lives, supporters say.

Harding, 32, is receiving both mental health and alcohol counseling. She has also been placed in clean and sober housing, where she resides with her 3-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

More than 300 people have been diverted from jail and into mental health services and drug and alcohol treatment since the program began in November 2007.

"We strongly support jail diversion," said Ron Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Arlington, Va. "There is a lot of data and evidence that they work."

Since the 1950s, beds at mental hospitals nationwide have been reduced from more than 500,000 to about 58,000, sending many people who suffer from mental illness into the streets and jails.

The push to reduce the number of beds available at state hospitals came in part by efforts to have these patients treated at smaller community-based centers, said Chris De Villenueve, director of Lower Valley services with Comprehensive Mental Health.

But federal and state funding was insufficient, and the smaller centers lacked beds, he said.

"Essentially, 30 percent (of the mentally ill) were fundamentally homeless," he said.

Trouble without treatment

Without treatment, many end up getting into trouble. Nationwide, stories abound of how their run-ins with police sometimes end tragically.

Yakima has stories of its own.

On Oct. 3, 2008, 19-year-old William Murray was found hanging in his cell at the Yakima County Jail. He was being held on arson charges in an incident in which he tried to kill himself in a fire.

On Oct. 17, 2005, Gerry Holman, a black-belt in karate who scuffled with police, shook off the effects of three Taser shocks, escaped officers and drowned in nearby Aspen Lake.

And on Aug. 11, 2003, police shot and killed 38-year-old Elvis Wayne Wilson after he lunged at them with a knife, urging them to shoot and kill him.

Police admit that the "take 'em to jail" attitude doesn't always work with the mentally ill. Now, officers are undergoing training to respond to such incidents.

Nearly a third of more than 60 deputies with the Yakima County Sheriff's Office and about 70 percent of roughly 135 Yakima police officers, including some dispatch officers, already have been trained to respond to such incidents.

Officers receive 40 hours in crisis intervention training to identify basic mental illness symptoms, such as depression, mania and hallucinations, and learn how to defuse potentially dangerous situations.

Officers say the training, which was made possible through a three-year, $240,000 state and federal grant, fosters new perspectives.

"I think the ability to learn -- it's not all about going out there and kicking ass and taking names -- it's going out there and learning about the public," said Deputy Bob Locatti.

He said his partner at first didn't think the training had anything to offer.

"His idea was 'there's nothing they can teach me that I don't already know,'" he said. "By the end of the first day, he was like 'we need more training.'"

Officers' discretion

Law enforcement officers have discretion to offer suspects diversion if they appear to be suffering from any mental illness. Often it's simply a matter of asking certain questions and paying attention to behavior, said Locatti.

"Every officer that I have talked to after they have diverted somebody said exactly the same thing: 'When I offered them diversion, they said yeah,'" he said.

The diversion center is staffed 24 hours and allows officers to drop off suspects any time.

There, suspects can stay up to 30 days.

The Triage Center not only serves as a central hub for services -- such as mental health, housing and drug and alcohol treatment -- it also helps people receive help faster than they would if they were to go to each agency individually, said Marcy Treat, who does chemical dependency assessments at the center.

Social service agencies usually operate independently, but the triage center offers a form of one-stop shopping.

"Here, assessments are done within 24 hours and a client can be seen by a prescriber within a week, depending on the need or crisis," Treat said, something that could take up to a month elsewhere. "The objective of our program is to keep them out of jail -- it's the revolving door that we're trying to stop."

The program also saves money.

It costs $71.25 a day to house one inmate at the Yakima County Jail, which has an annual budget of about $30 million. About 18 percent of the roughly 1,100 inmates incarcerated there daily suffer from severe mental illness, said jail supervisor of mental health Michael Aquilino.

Medication for the mentally ill runs the jail about $15,000 a month, he said.

"It's not just about locking up the bad guys," he said of the county jail. "It's taking care of some of the sickest and worst-off people in the county. I don't think the public realizes how much time we spend taking care of the sick."

Operating the diversion program is much cheaper -- about $433,000 a year.

Comprehensive Mental Health vice president Jack Maris says the average cost of incarceration is about four times that of diversion.

He and others view the triage center as a better public investment because mentally ill offenders are often arrested more than once.

A federal grant supplied the funds to get the diversion program started and to train law enforcement officers on how to deal with the mentally ill. When the federal money ran out for diversion services, Yakima County agreed to finance it this year. But that money expired this week.

Now, both county and city officials are talking about how to keep funding going to continue the diversion program and training for officers.

"I do believe that it's a critical program and all of us are concerned about funding right now," said Yakima Mayor Dave Edler. "We're going to look at everything we possibly can. We have a good track record of looking for and pursuing grants for policing."

For Harding, who spent Christmas and New Year's Day in jail and away from her family, the program is giving her another chance at life.

Now she's learning how to combat post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

"I feel like there is hope and I'm learning every day to where before I didn't understand what was going on," said the former preschool teacher. "The big part is learning that I'm not the only one and that there's help out there."

* Phil Ferolito can be reached at 509-577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.

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