A legislative study committee was told this week that Indiana's county jails have become the "insane asylums" for the state, according to a report by the Associated Press. The Interim Study Committee on Corrections and Criminal Code was told by county sheriffs Kenneth Murphy and Steve Rogers that county jails are taking up the slack left by state mental hospitals that have downsized to the point that state mental hospitals no longer have room for all of the state's mentally ill.
This is not news to official Indiana, its sheriffs and its lawmakers. Sheriffs in Southern Indiana have been telling us this for years that their jails have become the main treatment centers for the mentally ill, because mental hospitals no longer have room. Consequently our jails are left to hold the mentally ill, who rightly should be receiving treatment in our mental hospitals. Our course, Evansville has its state mental hospital on the East Side of the city, but it does not have enough beds to care for those mentally ill individuals. So they end up in the Vanderburgh County Jail, after being picked up on the street, mentally ill and with no place to go.
It is a shame.
According to the Associated Press, since the 1980s, many state mental hospitals have been closed or downsized as part of a shift to community based care. Of course, there is not enough care available in outpatient programs, or some mentally ill individuals simply are not capable of taking advantage of outpatient programs. They belong in in-patent facilities, but instead, they end up in the county jails.
"Quite frankly, we have become the insane asylum for the United States, not just the state of Indiana," said Murphy, sheriff of rural Franklin County in southeastern Indiana. Rogers is sheriff of Howard County in Central Indiana. They told the study committee that they struggle to cope with mentally ill inmates who they don't believe really belong behind bars. Both estimated that as many as one-fourth of jail inmates in Indiana may have serious mental illness. An Evansville Courier & Press report in April from the Indiana Department of Corrections showed that there were 5,149 corrections inmates diagnosed with varying degrees of mental illness.
Of course, in recent years, we have heard the same from Vanderburgh County sheriffs.
Rogers told the committee that "Jails are the largest mental health facilities in most counties."
The questions is, what can lawmakers on the study committee do. After all, it is a matter of state money; that is the reason for the downsizing of state mental hospitals in the first place. Remember that the next time a mentally ill Hoosier misses out on health care, only to do major harm to the innocent.