Safe ‘til Stable Initiative Compliments the Jericho Initiative
Posted By atorturedsoul on November 19, 2009
Former Shelby County, TN mayor, now Memphis city mayor, A.C. Wharton, launched the Jericho Initiative on March 5, 2009. The initiative was designed to promote public health and safety, decriminalize mental illness and support effective jail population management. The recently launched Safe ’til Stable Initiative in Tennessee compliments the efforts of Shelby County government officials.
As explained on the Shelby County, TN website:
“The Jericho Initiative provides a conceptual framework for systemic improvements in the interface between justice and behavioral health systems,” said Mayor Wharton. “This is a bold and provocative approach to combat prevailing issues related to recidivism.”
The Jericho Initiative rises from Mayor Wharton’s nationally-recognized, post-booking jail diversion program - the Jericho Project. Now in its 10th year, the Jericho Project pioneered a non-specialty court model designed to target individuals with serious mental illness and co-occurring substance use whose level of criminal justice involvement makes them ineligible for diversion through other programs. The Jericho Project offers courts quality alternatives to pretrial detention utilizing an array of supervised, conditional release strategies.
As reported by the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, TN:
The “Safe ’til Stable” initiative will provide emergency responders a 24-hour service to get background information on those with bipolar disorder.
Those with bipolar disorder can now wear MedicAlert accessories to inform law enforcement and health care professionals of their condition.
A call into MedicAlert’s phone service will inform police that the person should not go into a jail cell, but to a hospital. It will also inform health care providers they should check the patient’s health record before proceeding with care delivery.
(If you would like more information about this program, visit the MedicAlert website.)
Perhaps the combined efforts of these initiatives will prevent the mentally ill from winding up trapped in the criminal justice system. In 2006, the number of mentally ill persons in prison quadrupled.
According to Human Rights Watch:
In 1998, the BJS reported there were an estimated 283,000 prison and jail inmates who suffered from mental health problems. That number is now estimated to be 1.25 million. The rate of reported mental health disorders in the state prison population is five times greater (56.2 percent) than in the general adult population (11 percent).
Women prisoners have an even higher rate of mental health problems than men: almost three quarters (73 percent) of all women in state prison have mental health problems, compared to 55 percent of men.
56 percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners have symptoms or a recent history of mental health problems. The Human Rights Watch reported in September 2009:
Prisons were never designed as facilities for the mentally ill, yet that is one of their primary roles today. Many of the men and women who cannot get mental health treatment in the community are swept into the criminal justice system after they commit a crime. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 56 percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners have symptoms or a recent history of mental health problems. Prisoners have rates of mental illness-including such serious disorders as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression-that are two to four times higher than members of the general public. Studies and clinical experience consistently indicate that 8 to 19 percent of prisoners have psychiatric disorders that result in significant functional disabilities, and another 15 to 20 percent will require some form of psychiatric intervention during their incarceration.
More needs to be done to reduce these numbers and the Safe ’til Stable and Jericho Initiatives are a step in the right direction.
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