Mississippi expands forensic capacity and plans an 83-bed unit after years of jail waits
Mississippi Today opened with a man who waited 773 days in the Adams County jail for a forensic evaluation and more than four and a half years in jail overall. The story reports that evaluation waits had averaged over a year in 2017, and that the department had since converted space to raise forensic capacity and planned a new 83-bed unit to replace a worn-out building with roughly a dozen to fifteen beds.
Funding was stitched together from a legislative bond, consolidations and reprioritized projects, and Medicaid division money rather than a direct appropriation. Attorneys from the MacArthur Justice Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center had pressed the state, and the article says the talks avoided a lawsuit.
A follow-up ProPublica report two weeks later said the wait for a first evaluation was down to about 19 days, though restoration treatment for those found incompetent still took around eight months.
Source: Department of Mental Health dramatically increases forensic beds at State Hospital — Mississippi Today, by Larrison Campbell
← Back to the map