Texas judicial and health commissions publish a toolkit to shrink the jail wait for competency restoration beds
The toolkit, dated October 2021, opens by saying Texas faces a growing crisis of people held in county jails after being found incompetent to stand trial, with more than 1,800 waiting for inpatient competency restoration. It reports a 38 percent rise over 20 years in people found incompetent and says nearly 70 percent of state hospital beds are used by the forensic population.
It then offers role-by-role checklists arranged along the sequential intercept model: crisis response and diversion for behavioral health providers and police, outpatient and jail-based restoration alternatives, earlier waitlist monitoring by sheriffs and jail administrators, case-flow and scheduling fixes for courts, and separate checklists for prosecutors and defense attorneys. The two agencies describe it as part of an 'Eliminate the Wait' initiative to build a roadmap for reducing the inpatient waitlist.
The PDF on the commission's site is the January 2022 reissue of the October 2021 document.
Source: The Texas Toolkit for Rightsizing Competency Restoration Services — Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health, by Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health and Texas Health and Human Services Commission
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