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State, local officials gather to discuss mentally ill inmates at regional jail

Virginian-Pilot - 12/3/2016

Dec. 02--PORTSMOUTH

How do you prevent more mentally ill inmates from dying in jail as Jamycheal Mitchell did and instead get them the services they need?

That was the question at the center of a meeting of more than two dozen state and local officials at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail on Friday.

As everyone in the room acknowledged, there's no easy answer.

"What we are here to do is to try and develop a common understanding and a path forward in terms of helping people address the challenges some of our defendants have as they come in and out of the criminal justice system" said Dr. William Hazel, state secretary of Health and Human Resources.

Portsmouth Commonwealth's Attorney Stephanie Morales has yet to decide whether anyone will be charged in connection with Mitchell's death. On Friday her office announced that it has received -- and is reviewing -- all the information from a State Police investigation into the case.

Mitchell died in August 2015 at the regional jail after being ordered by a judge to be restored to competency at Eastern State Hospital. That order was never received by the hospital, and a second sent in July 2015 was stuck in a desk drawer and not addressed until after his death.

Among the attendees at the Friday meeting were jail officials, staff members from various agencies, local city officials, sheriffs, Department of Public Safety Secretary Brian Moran and staff from local community service boards.

"This is not just a public safety issue," Moran said. "This is not a particularly new issue, either."

The state has been grappling with treatment of the mentally ill charged with crimes since his early days as a prosecutor, Moran said.

"A lot of these issues are familiar to us, but it is increasing," he said.

The problem the officials outlined is complex and involves local and state agencies with various levels of funding, resources and interaction with the mentally ill.

Often, a jail inmate needs medication but refuses to take it, making a mental illness worse. Jail officials can't force anyone to take their medication. The only option they have is to get a court order, called a temporary detention order, to send these inmates to a state hospital.

Even getting that order is an entangled process involving a local magistrate, jail staff and someone from the local community services board.

Several officials noted the need for more services in communities for the mentally ill, both to help them stay out of the criminal justice system and to help free up state hospital beds that could then be available for inmates referred by jails.

Hampton Roads accounts for about twice as many restoration-to-competency orders sent to state hospitals as any other region in the state, and about three times as many people ruled not guilty by reason of insanity, said Dr. Jack Barber, interim commissioner of the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.

The reason, said Dean Barker of the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board, is that when people are released from a mental health facility, they go to where they can find a bed.

"If someone is seriously mentally ill and they are homeless and they are discharged from Eastern State, they don't go to the Oceanfront, they don't go to Colonial Williamsburg, they go to where the concentrated, cheap group homes are, and those are in the very urban areas of Norfolk, Hampton, Portsmouth, Newport News," he said.

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