Jail struggling with housing for mental patients

Published 6:00 am Monday, March 14, 2005

The Lincoln County Jail continues to struggle with housingmental patients and the prognosis for aid, which once seemedcertain, does not look good.

“This is no place for mental health patients,” said Ralph Boone,Lincoln County Jail warden.

In 2004, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department receivedbetween 70 and 80 orders to pick up mentally ill patients for latertransport to a state facility.

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Mental patients are kept at the jail on orders, usually fromchancery court, he said. They are housed at the jail until a bedbecomes available at one of the state mental hospitals.

A plan to provide better service to mental patients wasestablished nearly five years ago when the Legislature approved theconstruction of seven regional crisis intervention sites to serveas an intermediary between when patients were picked up and spacecould be made available at the state hospitals.

In 1999, Brookhaven was approved as one of the crisisintervention center sites and a ground breaking ceremony was held.Other crisis centers have been built in Batesville, Corinth,Cleveland, Grenada, Newton and Laurel.

More than four years after its approval, however, the Brookhavenfacility project is still on hold. Money to construct the facilityis available, but a lack of operating funds prevents the projectfrom moving forward, state officials say. The other six facilitieshave been built and are operating in a limited capacity, but budgetconcerns this year could threaten their continued operations.

The budget stalemate means the Lincoln County Jail continues tohouse mental patients in a facility not designed for them.

“It’s a big liability to the jail,” Boone said. “We’re notdesigned for these activities.”

Some patients require a level of certain level of care notusually required of jailers, he said. Jailers do not have medicaltraining beyond the state-mandated CPR training and are notexperienced in the care of the mentally ill.

“It’s a big concern,” Boone said. “Besides, if you had a familymember who was ill, would you want them stuck in the jail onlybecause their medicine needs to be changed?”

Most of the mentally ill housed temporarily in the jail are nottroublemakers themselves, he said, but it’s their presence in thejail that causes problems by disrupting the facility’s methods ofoperation.

“We only have three holding cells, so it causes a problem forus,” Boone said.

Mentally ill patients kept at the jail cannot be housed with aninmate or with another mentally ill patient. Therefore, they arekept in virtual isolation in a holding cell.

Those holding cells have a purpose, however, and when they arefilled with mental patients “we have to rearrange our whole jailsystem because of the ill people,” Boone said.

People booked for a crime they allegedly committed are normallyplaced in a holding cell to keep them separated from the jailpopulation until their bonding process is completed. When thosecells are filled with mental patients, the only recourse left tojailers is to place the suspects immediately into the jailpopulation after booking.

In addition, Boone said, jails are not reimbursed for the mealsand other associated costs of housing the patients, regardless ofhow long they’ve been kept at the jail. Therefore, Boone said,local taxpayers are footing the bill for the housing of statepatients.