Dallas County v. Texas: Commissioners May Sue If State Doesn’t Provide Mentally Ill Beds

Dallas County Commissioners notify the state of a shortage of mental hospital beds for people behind bars who have been found incompetent to stand trial.

On Tuesday, the county sent a letter to the attorney general’s office and to the chief executive officer and general counsel of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. The commissioners are asking the state to provide more than 300 mental hospital beds within 30 days or they will file a lawsuit.

Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins put the total number of such prisoners at 382 as of the end of December. He said it was the state’s responsibility to try to help them regain their legal capacity so they could eventually face trial.

According to KERA, competency recovery services are spread across Texas. Prisoners who have not yet been convicted may remain in the county jail until space becomes available at the public hospital.

“We are accommodating mentally handicapped people with whom we do not have intensive services for the best possible treatment. The state has a better way to solve this problem, and it has a legal obligation,” Jenkins told reporters. Observer. “And it cost our local taxpayers … just under $800,000 in the month of December to accommodate the people the government was supposed to take.”

Jenkins said the money could instead be used to fund other initiatives such as social services, housing assistance for hundreds of local families, and even items such as expanding a local bike path.

There’s one more thing the county could do if the state steps up: levy lower taxes, Jenkins said.

However, if the state doesn’t come to a resolution with Dallas County, Jenkins said, the commissioners will have to flex some legal muscles. Without naming names, he added that other districts want to join this work.

Jenkins noted that for victims who want to spend their day in court, waiting for the defendant to recover their legal capacity can be frustrating. It is also bad for the prisoners themselves, some of whom may in fact be innocent of the crime they are accused of.

“You can have mentally unstable, innocent people who are just stuck in jail because they don’t get the services they need from the government,” Jenkins said.

Observer had not received a response from the attorney general’s office by the time of publication, and HHSC declined to comment.

“I just hate to see taxpayer dollars being wasted on lawsuits.” – Krish Gundu, Texas Prison Project

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Earlier this month, FOX 4 reported that Dallas County commissioners were seeking to release more defendants who did not pose a security risk by adjusting the pre-trial release program. They hoped the move would help reduce prison overcrowding.

Meanwhile, in a bid to attract staff, HHSC announced on Tuesday that it will raise wages for employees at public residence centers and public hospitals. Due to staffing issues, more than 700 public hospital beds are currently out of service, and there are currently about 1,805 vacancies in such facilities.

Gov. Greg Abbott highlighted the need for a “highly skilled, well-trained health workforce” in a statement on the agency’s website.

“By raising salaries and wages to be more competitive, HHSC is meeting acute staffing needs and bringing more hospital beds back into the network,” he said. “Together, we support the recruitment and retention of the best and brightest healthcare professionals to serve Texans in our public hospitals and public residence centers.”

Krish Gundu, co-founder and chief executive of the Texas Jail Project, said in an email that the issue of defendants awaiting recovery languishing in county jails is “a statewide crisis that has been brewing for some time now. And it’s largely a self-inflicted crisis.”

Yes, Texas could have acted faster to bring those hundreds of beds back online, she said, but local authorities are not without fault.

Instead of taking things to this point, counties should have required reporting and data from mental health authorities to figure out how to provide care in proper settings, not in nursing homes or prisons, Gundu said. They could also invest in programs that help keep people with mental illness out of jail in the first place.

“We could do much more in the community to prevent this crisis before criminalizing members of our community,” she wrote. “But now that we’re here, the counties should be asking the state for a partnership to see how we can secure those 700+ beds that are off by urgently funding over 2,000 staff positions. And the state should work on options for the long-term population (365+ days) in the public hospital system, which currently stands at over 50 percent.”

In a follow-up email, Gundu added, “Come to think of it, maybe every county should sue to force the state to put those 700+ beds back on the network. Perhaps this will force the state. I just hate it when taxpayer dollars continue to be spent on lawsuits.”

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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