CalMatters finds California's incompetent-to-stand-trial referrals up 60 percent in five years
CalMatters' reporting on California's mental health system devotes most of its first installment to the pipeline for defendants found incompetent to stand trial. It reports that such referrals grew 60 percent over five years, and that the number of inmates waiting in jail for a state hospital placement rose from 343 five years earlier to 819 in the most recent year.
The article says more than 90 percent of state hospital patients now come through the criminal justice system, with more than a fifth of them incompetent-to-stand-trial referrals, and that the state had recently added roughly 700 hospital and jail-based restoration beds. It also notes that nearly half of the incompetent-to-stand-trial patients at Napa State Hospital had 15 or more prior arrests and that 47 percent had received no Medi-Cal mental health services in the six months before their arrest.
The piece frames the waitlist as a symptom of a broader failure to treat serious mental illness before arrest, which is the argument behind later diversion and community-restoration efforts.
Source: All too often, California’s default mental institutions are now jails and prisons — CalMatters, by Jocelyn Wiener
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