Alaska's competency system hits a breaking point as jailed defendants wait months for evaluations and beds
Alaska's competency pipeline runs through one place, the Alaska Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage, which had two forensic evaluators plus an intern and only 10 beds for restoration. At a February 13, 2019 legislative hearing a health department deputy commissioner reported 54 people waiting for initial evaluations and 28 waiting for a restoration bed. The newspaper cited a consultant's analysis putting the average wait from evaluation order to forensic bed at just under six months as of December 2018.
Demand was rising: Alaska courts ordered competency evaluations in 231 criminal cases in 2018, 184 of them misdemeanors, up from 166 cases in 2013, and judges found defendants incompetent in 56 percent of evaluated cases. The Alaska Public Defender Agency filed a habeas corpus motion in October 2018 arguing the delays violated due process; the story pointed to Washington's roughly $50 million in fines under Trueblood as what could follow. A consultant for Wellpath, which the state had just hired to run the troubled hospital, said two well-run 10-bed forensic units could restore people in 100 days or less.
The piece is the fullest early account of the backlog that would soon produce emergency funding and appellate rulings.
Source: Alaska’s system for evaluating mentally ill defendants hits the breaking point — Anchorage Daily News, by Michelle Theriault Boots
← Back to the map