Nevada Dumping Mentally Ill Patients On Other States

What the EFF?

Shouldn't be tolerated, but until one state gets too many 'transplants' so it affects their bottom line, or one of the 'transplants' bothers someone, nothing will. Seriously - who cares? They're just crazy people, after all.

shadowwalker said:

Shouldn't be tolerated, but until one state gets too many 'transplants' so it affects their bottom line, or one of the 'transplants' bothers someone, nothing will. Seriously - who cares? They're just crazy people, after all.

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Or until someone's SO / family hits them with a lawsuit for transporting a custodial adult across state lines without authorization.

Echo what Ciya just said. I see a bad moon of litigation rising.

caw

Gee, why didn't they just do what so many states have done-- figure out how to send them, indirectly but quite predictably, to a state prison?

dfwtinman said:

Gee, why didn't they just do what so many states have done-- figure out how to send them, indirectly but quite predictably, to a state prison?

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This.

I never ever comment here, mostly just lurk, but I have to say something about this: This is appalling. As someone with mental illness and having many close friends with one, I'm just disgusted. And I'll probably just leave the rest of the conversation up to you guys because I'm not a P&CE person k

The article suggest that in many cases the people went to Vegas during a manic episode and were being returned to their home state. But these have been some cases where the proper effort to ensure they were stable and had somewhere to go was not made. But the people were going back to their resident state, not being dumped there.

The key part is that this came after they slashed the mental health budget. This is more likely to happen in an environment where people think the state spending money on healthcare is a bad thing.

Shadow Dragon said:

The key part is that this came after they slashed the mental health budget. This is more likely to happen in an environment where people think the state spending money on healthcare is a bad thing.

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This.

The nation's largest jails have become the nation's largest providers of mental healthcare services. The wardens of these institutions are not quiet on this topic. They will tell you that it costs about 7 times more to treat a prisoner behind bars than it does to treat a psychiatric patient in a hospital.

But, there is more than just budgets in play here. At a time when our nation's mental institutions were often dysfunctional warehouses, there were many who supported "main-streaming" mental patients for good and humanitarian reasons. But, unfortunately, states did little or nothing to establish community-based cared in its place. So, large numbers of mentally ill patients (the great majority of whom are not violent)
due to a range of symptoms and events, soon encountered law enforcement and, ultimately, found themselves once again warehoused.

My home state of Texas is a nightmare. You'll hear our politicians crowing about the robust Texas economy. It's true, but it's not like these petti-fogging politicians had anything to do with the state's vast hydrocarbon resources. Texas, depending on how your score it, ranks either 49th or 50th in public money spent per capita on mental health.

dfwtinman said:

Gee, why didn't they just do what so many states have done-- figure out how to send them, indirectly but quite predictably, to a state prison?

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Having a direct and ongoing personal situation involving mental health and serious legal issues, I can tell you some things directly from a criminal defense attorney I have talked with:

Short of going to the extreme of an insanity defense plea for a charge offense (which almost never works), mental health issues are not considered excuses for criminal acts. As this attorney told me, the jail is filled with mentally ill people. He said that mental issues might become a mitigating factor at the time of sentencing, after a conviction, but they carry almost no weight as a mitigation against the commission of a crime itself.

An insanity plea, everywhere, requires demonstration that the offender had no conception that his actions were wrong or would be considered criminal. That's not anywhere close to saying that what person X did was caused, or contributed to, by mental issues. People don't get absolved of criminal acts because of the influence of drugs or alcohol, nor do they get absolved because of mental issues.

There's not much question that serial killers, rapists, child molesters, all manner of criminal offenders, ain't exactly right upstairs. That doesn't get them off. If it did, Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Richard Ramirez, Randy Kraft and Dennis Rader would be out walking the streets freely today.

People don't get sent to prison for mental illnesses. They do get sent to prison when the mental illness leads them to commit crimes for which they need to go to prison.

caw

caw

blacbird said:

People don't get absolved of criminal acts because of the influence of drugs or alcohol, nor do they get absolved because of mental issues.

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Drugs and alcohol are taken voluntarily. To equate that with mental illness is one example of how outdated and ignorant the justice system is.

blacbird said:

There's not much question that serial killers, rapists, child molesters, all manner of criminal offenders, ain't exactly right upstairs. That doesn't get them off.

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I would submit there is a difference between a sociopath/psychopath and someone with schizophrenia, bipolar, psychoses, etc.

If mental illness were properly treated - and the treatment system properly funded - many, if not most, mentally ill would never see the inside of a jail, let alone prison.

Blacbird

This is of course true. Mental illness, even in serious form, is typically insufficient to satisfy the McNaughton Rule ('merican spelling). But the rule is in rooted in suspicion. For fear of the guilty going free, the rule is quite deliberately difficult to satisfy.

I do wish to clarify that I have not proposed and do not propose that mental illness negate a finding of mens rea, much less relieve all personal responsibility.

What I am saying is that even an extremely serious illness like schizophrenia is treatable. You say this attorney states that the prison's are filled with the mentally ill. Why should this be? One has to ask, had these prisoners been treated before they came into contact with the criminal justice system, might the arc of their lives have taken a different trajectory? I too tired at the moment to do the research (perhaps later), but you will find many cops, prosecutors, judges and wardens (hardly the world of "bleeding hearts") who believe there's every reason to think so.

I'm guessing this isn't a scandal because it's been a fairly common practice, though perhaps not in large numbers from a specific institution, for a long time.

I heard it referred to as 'bus therapy' first like a decade or more ago. I was told it's often used in circumstances with say, a person who refuses treatment and is not containable legally yet is repeatedly brought in and/or has run-ins with the law or other people. The case I first heard the term with involved a mentally ill homeless person prone to harassing pedestrians but competent enough to stay out of jail and any facility. So the staff of the place he used to get hauled to a lot chipped in and got him 'bus therapy' - a one-way ticket to some town he had relatives in.

Be nice if there were better options but for a variety of reasons, seems there are often few.

shadowwalker said:

If mental illness were properly treated - and the treatment system properly funded - many, if not most, mentally ill would never see the inside of a jail, let alone prison.

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I was commenting on what is, not on what ought to be.

And no aspect of the U.S. health "system", using that term in a very broad sense, is "properly funded". Unless, of course, you personally possess the proper funds. In which case, the "system" works just fine. For you.

("You" being used generically, not referring to you, specifically, SW)

caw

dfwtinman said:

Gee, why didn't they just do what so many states have done-- figure out how to send them, indirectly but quite predictably, to a state prison?

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Why do that when you can just close the state facility and dump them all on the street, as Indiana and Kentucky have done?

Of course the circumstances in the OP are sick and wrong, but what's happening nationally isn't much better. People don't have the money for long term care, insurance won't pay for long term care, and government funding for care has been cut so much that folks are out on the street or in prison.

Same thing happens to kiddos. Many parents try their best to get violent kiddos the help that they need, even to the extent of terminating rights so that the state will pay for care. There aren't enough beds. There isn't enough funding. Insurance companies will step a child down from a program because "they've been in it too long," despite docs and workers saying it's necessary. Then one of these kiddos shoots up a school or kills their parents, and everyone says "why wasn't something done!"

Gross generalization on my part, but I've seen some very scary things working in the system.

blacbird said:

I was commenting on what is, not on what ought to be.

And no aspect of the U.S. health "system", using that term in a very broad sense, is "properly funded". Unless, of course, you personally possess the proper funds. In which case, the "system" works just fine. For you.

("You" being used generically, not referring to you, specifically, SW)

caw

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Understood. Didn't mean to let my personal distaste for the justice system to spill over, either.