From Grits for Breakfast, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal provides insight on the experience of the Lubbock County, Texas, Special Needs Defender. 

Since November 2009, the office has received 367 qualifying referrals out of 1,777 total referrals.

Of those 367, 208 were accepted, according to data from the defender’s office.

The office represents defendants who are charged with felonies or Class A or B misdemeanors, are indigent and have a qualifying mental health illness or condition like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder.

An underlying assumption of the criminal justice system is that people are relatively sane.  We assume that people perceive the world around them in a somewhat realistic way, and that the incentives upon which the system is based will influence their decisions.  This doesn’t work at all when a person suffers from mental illness.  The only aspect of the system that applies in any way is their loss of freedom, protecting others from their actions but doing nothing to prevent it from happening again.

The idea behind the Special Needs Defender is both the appropriate defense of those with mental illness, something that many lawyers are incapable of both identifying and delivering, even if they are sensitive to the need, and providing the ancillary psychological/psychiatric care needed. 

Special needs defendants need more services and attention while in jail than anyone else, said David Slayton, director of court administration for Lubbock County. They need attorneys who are trained in handling those needs because the legal process gets bottled up even more when attorneys don’t know how to handle their clients.

The Special Needs Defender’s Office was able to provide that legal representation without having to expand the county payroll by utilizing private attorneys trained to handle special needs cases, Slayton said.

The office works as a central hub, coordinating with private attorneys and the Lubbock Regional Mental Health Mental Retardation Center.

Both the need for, and efficacy of, this combined delivery of legal and mental health services seems to be so clear and obvious that it’s disgraceful that this hasn’t become an integral part of the criminal justice system decades ago and across every jurisdiction.    In addition, it points to the need to train judges in the impact of mental health, as my experience is that some judges “get it” while others couldn’t care less and see the mentally ill or the intellectually challenged as mere annoyances to be dealt with swiftly and harshly.

One might assume that the mentally ill are “found” during the screening process in jails and prisons, and then provided with appropriate treatment.  Neither is necessarily happening, even where the screening process is done with good intentions.

Slayton said the old mental health screening process wasn’t good enough. Jailers were responsible for asking a few screening questions and didn’t have access to inmates’ state mental health records. “Twenty percent of the people (screened) have mental health issues,” Slayton said. “That would be 20 percent we were missing.”

The screening process in the past was so rudimentary it didn’t catch a lot of the people it was intended to, with questions like “what season is it?” Gerlach said. “If you had an IQ of 50, it was probably going to point that out. It might point out somebody who was in an acute psychotic crisis,” Gerlach said. “Somebody can be pretty psychotic and hold it together long enough to get through something like that.”

The need for programs like this seems manifestly obvious, both from the perspective of helping those with mental illness and preventing harm to society and recidivism.  There doesnt appear to be much call for extensive discussion as to the reasons why, except to wonder whether any competent jurisdiction wouldn’t initiate a similar program. 

This is, without a doubt, a win-win for all involved, and every jurisdiction should have a program to address the special needs of the mentally ill and intellectually challenged who find themselves in the criminal justice system.  To ignore or deny it is inexcusable.  Society is no better off by treating the mentally ill as criminals.