Reporting finds people released after incompetency dismissals often get no follow-up treatment
The piece follows a Great Falls man with schizophrenia whose charges were repeatedly dismissed after incompetency findings, leaving him cycling between jail and short hospital stays. Montana does not systematically track dismissals based on incompetency or what happens to those defendants afterward.
The reporter contrasts that with approaches in Colorado, which uses navigator teams, and Oregon, which uses psychiatric review boards, though both face resource limits. The article also cites a Treatment Advocacy Center finding, as of 2017, that many states made little effort to build treatment pathways for such defendants, and a Minnesota TV investigation of serious-charge cases released without adequate treatment.
The story directs attention to the back end of the competency process, the gap after dismissal.
Source: When Mental Illness Leads to Dropped Charges, Patients Often Go Without Stabilizing Care — KFF Health News, by Katheryn Houghton
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