The topic of mental health care is again prevalent in our thoughts and discussions, as is the case after each horrific tragedy involving the mentally ill. Our most pressing job as a society is to protect the most vulnerable members of our communities.
It is also our job to do everything in our ability to leave behind a world, a country, a state and a city that is better than we received it.
We are failing to provide the proper treatment for the mentally ill, and therefore failing to protect those unfortunate individuals from crime and tragedy.
When Central State Hospital closed in 1994, many of those suffering from mental illness had nowhere to turn. As a result, some took to lives of homelessness and petty crime for survival, and many have ended up repeatedly in the criminal justice system.
Forty percent of the inmates in the Marion County Jail are on psychotropic drugs. In many cases, with the proper guidance and treatment, these individuals could be productive residents of our city, and not stuck in a cycle where inconsistent access to needed medication leads to acting out and landing in jail.
It is far more costly to the taxpayers for the mentally ill to repeat this cycle, than it would be to deal with mental illness as a community in more proper settings. Nora Haynes, of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, used a can of soda with $1,160 price tag to convince legislators in the state of Georgia to fund a program called “Opening Doors to Recovery.” The program could help jails and prisons from taking the place of mental institutions. That can of soda represented the cost for the 21 days a mental patient spent in jail for stealing from a convenience store while he was off of his medication.
Our criminal justice system, state and local government, and non-profit organizations need to work together to prevent the mentally ill from turning to crime. We must also rethink our tendency to use our jails as de facto mental health facilities. In addition to a community-sponsored initiative to enhance our city through the proper treatment of the mentally ill, my office, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, and other agencies that comprise our Marion County judicial system are undertaking other initiatives to deal more productively with the mentally ill.
For instance, we save Marion County residents tax dollars by training our officers and deputies to better recognize and deal with mentally ill patients.
As the Marion County Sheriff, I am committed to working to protect the streets and scarce tax dollars of our community through the proper justice and treatment of non-violent mental health patients.
