Prisons, Jails and Courts in New Hampshire
DECEMBER 19, 2005 - NAMI NH has begun to take an interest (it's not a program yet) in prisons, jails and courts. One in four (26 percent) of the 2,500 inmates in state prison has a mental illness. Among young people in the Youth Development Center, the percentage is closer to 75 percent.
In the county jails (houses of correction) there are no precise figures, but we know that people with mental illness often go to jail for misdemeanors other people would not. Sometimes they are too poor and isolated to raise bail or pay fines, and sometimes they misbehave because their illness impairs their judgment.
In Our Own Voice coordinator Ken Braiterman, who has a family member in state prison, is leading these efforts for us. NAMI NH is joining other groups that have begun looking at forensic issues that involve people with mental illness. Here's some of what's going on:
- We are part of a group designing a jail diversion program for the Nashua District Court. People with mental illness who qualify for this alternative, and voluntarily agree to participate, can be referred to community-based treatment, under court supervision, instead of going to jail. Each defendant will have an individualized treatment plan that he and his attorney participate in creating, and court probation officers will monitor compliance with the program. A similar diversion program has been working for the past few years in Cheshire County District Court.
- In response to a request from Department of Corrections officials, we facilitated a meeting between DOC staff and state and local mental health administrators to begin looking for ways to help people with mental illness stay out of prison when they are released. We identified several obstacles to making a smooth transition from prison health care to community mental health care on the prison side of the equation and also on the community mental health side. Another series of obstacles fall into the broad category of lack of community supports for people released from prison, and lack of support for the families of people in prison. NAMI NH hopes to become part of a solution to these problems because community and family supports are, historically, what we do best.
- We joined a broad-based community initiative started by Bishop Eugene Robinson of the Episcopal church with the open-ended mission of finding out what's wrong in the prisons and helping to improve them. So far, this coalition has stimulated the state medical society to undertake a study of health care, including mental health care, inside the walls.
- A legislative committee is looking for ways to improve, and possibly rebuild and relocate the prison system's Secure Psychiatric Unit, which is now located on the state prison grounds in Concord and houses inmates whose mental illness makes them a danger to themselves or others, and also civilly committed people who are found too dangerous to be treated in NH Hospital. Some of these civilly committed people have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial for a crime. At the moment, the committee seems to be looking at a variety of options for this population. NAMI will be watching this process and participating when appropriate.
As funding for community-based mental health services continue to face choking budget cuts and fall behind inflation and population growth, courts, prisons and jails are becoming treatment facilities by default.
Nobody likes this situation: not the corrections system, not the courts, not the inmates or their families.
For many people with mental illness, incarceration is dangerous and the opposite of therapeutic. They are often victimized by other inmates, treated differently by staff, and sometimes face interruptions in their medication routines, especially in houses of correction, where people go unexpectedly, without medical records, for shorter periods of time, and more limited access to medical professionals than prison has. Some of these inmates pose a threat to prison staff and other inmates, and a severe drain on the prison's limited health care resources.
Elected officials should also be upset because arresting, trying and incarcerating someone with mental illness costs the taxpayers so much more than treating that person in the community. But that message still has not reached enough of our legislators.
So NAMI is getting involved because the people we serve -- consumers and their families -- are getting ensnared in this system in growing numbers.
They are a new population for us, with new and special needs. We will respond to them.
For more information, please contact Ken Braiterman at kbraiterman@naminh.org or
(603) 225-5359 ext. 17.
