We told you last Saturday about Travis County's plan to have a specialized public defender office to deal with mentally ill persons charged with crimes. LINK
Today's Austin American-Statemsn has an OpEd by Joe Crews, a Board member of Texas Appleseed, about the office. LINK
Travis County will soon do what no other county in the nation has done: create a stand-alone public defender office dedicated solely to representing criminal defendants with mental illness.
This is a bold and pioneering step and one that needs to be replicated across Texas, where jails house more than five times as many people with mental illness as do our psychiatric hospitals.
And
This kind of support could help reduce the lengthier jail stays experienced by defendants with serious mental illness. For example, a snapshot of the Travis County Jail population on Aug. 22, 2005, found that, compared to the general population accused of misdemeanor offenses, men with mental health needs had been jailed more than twice as long, 51 days, and women almost three times as long, 32 days.
Even more important, the MPHD Office will provide an institutional voice for defendants with mental illness — bringing together state and local stakeholders to find and develop long-term, cost-effective, community-based options to jailing persons with mental illness.
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