Texas has added more beds for jail inmates who need psychiatric treatment to be considered competent to face trial. But at least a third remain empty because the state can’t hire enough people to staff them.
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More than 2,500 mentally ill defendants are in a similar predicament. They wait in Texas county jails for months and sometimes more than a year for the kind of intense therapy and medication treatment available only through the state’s psychiatric hospital system. And while they wait, their conditions, if not treated locally, deteriorate.
, an assistant attorney general who was representing Texas Health and Human Services during Singer’s case, told the judge, according to a Dec. 9 transcript.a 38% increase in people who are found incompetent to stand trial.that the state psychiatric hospital system’s reduced capacity, an increase in demand, and staff recruitment and retention challenges were leading to lengthy waits for these beds and were putting pressure on jails, emergency rooms and community-based psychiatric hospitals.
When these same individuals can’t understand the charges against them, they might be locked up longer than what their eventual sentence might have been due to a lack of available beds in the state hospital. And in turn, their detainment can now last months or even a year before they enter a courtroom because of a lack of treatment.
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