Alaska Psychiatric Institute doubles restoration capacity with jail-based beds and an outpatient program
The Alaska Psychiatric Institute launched what it calls Journey to Resilience in late 2023: 10 restoration beds at the Anchorage Correctional Complex for felony defendants and 10 outpatient clinic spots for misdemeanants. That doubled a capacity that had been 10 beds statewide. An advocate cited about 50 people on the waitlist with an average five-month wait in jail, and the article reported that only about a fifth of the roughly 216 defendants found incompetent each year received restoration.
Funding came from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority ($850,000 over three years) and the legislature ($800,000 a year). Clinicians said the outpatient track is meant to link misdemeanor defendants to mental health court instead of dismissing charges.
This is the first sizeable capacity response to the backlog documented in 2019 and 2020.
Source: ‘A very long time coming’: API launches new programs for mentally ill defendants — Anchorage Daily News, by Tess Williams
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