Hennepin County data show about half of defendants found incompetent fall into a gap between criminal and civil commitment courts
Reporter Andy Mannix follows what court officials call "gap patients": people judged incompetent to face criminal charges who nonetheless do not meet the standard for involuntary civil commitment. When a defendant is found incompetent, misdemeanors are dropped and more serious charges are revisited in about six months, but without a commitment order any services are voluntary. According to a county judge's tracking cited in the article, 62 of the 119 defendants found incompetent in Hennepin County last year were gap patients, and those who were committed were restored to competency far more often than those who were not (61 percent versus 27 percent).
The article links the problem to growth in the number of competency petitions, which Hennepin County data put at 244 in fiscal 2005 and 567 by 2015. Prosecutors, public defenders and judges describe a drain on court and jail resources and real risks to the people involved, including untreated illness, exposure and injury, and a pattern of repeat arrests for low-level offenses.
Hennepin's response has been to assign a caseworker as soon as an incompetency evaluation is requested and to start linking defendants to housing, chemical-dependency and mental health services while they are still in custody. County officials also toured a Florida jail-diversion hub as a possible model, though a legislative proposal to fund three such hubs did not make it into the 2015 budget bill.
Source: The Uncommittables: How offenders with mental illnesses fall through the cracks of Minnesota's criminal justice system — MinnPost, by Andy Mannix
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