Indiana launches jail-based and community restoration pilots for defendants waiting on state hospital beds
TheStatehouseFile.com, a Franklin College student news service carried by the News and Tribune, reported that Indiana's Division of Mental Health and Addiction announced pilots focused on people found incompetent to stand trial who were awaiting placement in the state psychiatric hospital network. The aim was to restore competency and resolve criminal cases faster instead of leaving people in county jails until a state bed opened.
Jail-based restoration programs were starting in Marion and Vanderburgh counties with Adult and Child Health and Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare, and a separate community-based program in Marion County would serve people a court deemed safe to live outside custody while being restored, with therapy, skills training and legal education. A third effort, Project CREATE, was to move qualifying jail inmates statewide into private inpatient psychiatric providers, expected to begin by year's end. The division's director said many county jails were not equipped to give people with serious mental illness the treatment they need.
The announcement marked Indiana's first pilots of alternatives to hospital-only restoration, roughly eighteen months before the ACLU of Indiana sued the state over jail waits.
Source: New mental health treatment programs for inmates in Hoosier jails — News and Tribune (New Albany, IN), via TheStatehouseFile.com, by TheStatehouseFile.com
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