Bills
| 3.23.22

Will More Grant Money Improve Mental Health Screening in the Criminal Justice System? (S. 993)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is S. 993?

(Updated March 15, 2018)

This bill would reauthorize the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 — allowing the Attorney General to give grants to entities that focus on reducing recidivism and improving mental health screening/treatment in correctional facilities.

The Attorney General would be authorized to award grants for sequential intercept mapping and implementation — essentially a tool to study how the criminal justice system interacts with the mentally ill — that works to:

  • Help mental health and criminal justice stakeholders develop a shared understanding of how people with mental illnesses move through the criminal justice system;

  • Identify improved responses for emergency and crisis situations, specialized police-based needs, plus community and post-prison supervision;

  • Hire and train personnel, identify target populations, and offer services to reduce recidivism.

When considering grant applications, the Attorney General would have to give preference to programs that collaborate with criminal justice, mental health, substance abuse, and veterans service agencies. Grants could also be awarded for:

  • Peer to peer services or programs for qualified veterans;

  • Practices that identify and provide treatment, rehabilitation, legal, and transitional services to veterans who have been incarcerated;

  • Training programs to teach criminal justice, law enforcement, corrections, mental health, and substance abuse personnel how to identify and respond to incidents involving veterans.

Grants could also go to helping correctional facilities:

  • Provide the clinical, medical, and social needs of inmates; 

  • Assess appropriate treatments that address mental health and substance abuse needs;

  • Identify and screen for mental illness in inmates;

  • Develop and implement post-release transition plans.

Argument in favor

Prisons and jails are overcrowded with people who have mental health issues that should be getting treatment elsewhere. Law enforcement and community organizations need additional resources to cope with this problem.

Argument opposed

Many criminals with mental health problems pose a threat to public safety — which is why they were arrested in the first place. Communities and law enforcement need help working with these people, but throwing money at the problem isn't the solution.

Impact

People — particularly veterans — with mental health issues that otherwise would be sent to correctional facilities, their families, mental health and substance abuse groups, law enforcement officials, federal corrections facilities, their employees, related federal agencies, the DOJ, and the Attorney General.

Cost of S. 993

Assuming the funds are available, the CBO estimates that this bill would cost $100 million over the 2016-2020 period.

Additional Info

Of Note: According to a 2006 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, more than half of all prison and jail inmates at all levels of government were found to have a mental health problem. Human Rights Watch estimated that the number of mentally ill inmates was 1.25 million in 2006. About 40 percent of all people with mental illness have been arrested at least once.


In-Depth:

In the 113th Congress, a version of this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, but didn’t receive a vote from the full Senate. This was despite the support of a bipartisan group of legislators, and groups advocating for law enforcement, civil rights, veterans, and mental health services. 

This bill was unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as of April 2015 the House Judiciary Committee is still considering its identical companion.

Collaboration program grants could be used to coordinate and implement community-based crisis responses and long-term plans for frequent users of crisis services.

The Attorney General could award grants for training law enforcement officials to identify and respond to incidents involving people with mental illnesses.

Under collaboration grant programs, this bill would revise the definition of "preliminarily qualified offenders" to include:

  • Adults or juveniles in veterans treatment court programs who have been diagnosed with, or manifests signs of, mental illness or a substance abuse;

  • A requirement that people need to be unanimously approved for participation;

  • Disqualification of those who have been charged with or convicted of a sex offense, murder, or assault with intent to murder.


Media:


Summary by Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: Flickr user CG Hughes)