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Welcome Assistance for Ex-Inmates

Posted on: Friday, 19 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

ONE OF the ironies of modern corrections is that the mentally ill get their best therapy in jail.

But once they've been released on parole, they are forced to leave behind the most consistent treatment some have ever received for chronic mental illnesses.

Sometimes after a few days out on their own, they're already in a losing battle with their medication schedule. Behavior that had been under control after years of steady meds in jail becomes more bizarre without the attention to the routine they'd been used to while incarcerated, taking psychotropic prescription drugs like Thorazine.

New Jersey's Department of Corrections is in the initial stages of creating a specialized half-way-house to provide transitional services for parolees with mental-health issues.

Therapy and medication would continue.

It should prove to be another key for controlling the transition of ex-inmates reentering their communities.

The new services would be coordinated with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which is already under contract to provide services for the mentally ill in the state's 14 prisons.

Avoiding the sharp criticism he got because of a no-bid contract with UMDNJ, Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown is seeking proposals for therapists who would start working with inmates about to be released and stick with them on the outside.

The DOC's initiative addresses head-on a situation that ultimately poisons an already distressed minority community.

Some mentally ill inmates returned to the outside fall off the wagon within weeks of release and end up back in custody, corrections becoming the default alternative to serving their needs.

The number of beds for long-term mental treatment in New Jersey has dropped by more than a thousand over the past 10 years.

Mentally ill people are more likely to end up in jail instead of in treatment.

Like prison officials nationwide, Brown finds himself in charge of housing, health care and treatment for many the state's mentally ill.

"How is it that Corrections has the highest number of mentally ill cases in the state, even more than Human Services?" he asks in mock puzzlement, not really expecting a layman like me to unlock the box full of senseless public policy that turned jails into the new asylums.

New Jersey, like other states, is reaping the bitter harvest of the fourfold increase in inmates since 1977: The numbers grew from about 6,500 to 27,000 plus. Roughly 12 to 14 percent of them suffer from some sort of mental problem that must be treated.

Coupled with the fourfold increase is the reduction to 5,500 in the number of beds available for the mentally ill in state institutions. Closing of mental health facilities since the late 1970s has meant the end of long-term treatment for chronic needs.

The half-way house program for mentally ill ex-offenders will cost about $5.5 million, which would be reallocated from the DOC's existing budget. The sum does not include personnel.

If jails are going to be the treatment place for chronic mental illness, then the DOC and the New Jersey State Parole Board are the agencies that have to ease the transition to the outside.

Look at the proposed program as a way to protect the $50 million invested each year to treat the mentally ill inmates with medication and therapy.

Mentally ill criminals keep the revolving door spinning because they don't regularly get meds on the outside; they then lose control and start to exhibit behaviors that get them locked up again.

The transitional services to be offered by the halfway house can make only a dent in the state's recidivism rate, but every small step represents progress toward resolving a problem that keeps the prisons full.

In New Jersey, 62 percent of prisoners released are rearrested within three years. The mentally ill inmates sometimes last only weeks on the outside before relapsing into anti-social behavior that gets them reincarcerated.

At best, the halfway house - to serve an estimated 250 people at one time - is a way of buying time for the mentally ill in hopes that other initiatives taken by the Codey administration kick in before a less sympathetic administration makes mental health a lower priority.

*

Record Columnist Lawrence Aaron can be contacted at aaron@northjersey.com. Send comments about this column to oped@northjersey.com.

Source: Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.

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