FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 4, 2017
Pennsylvania Counties Gather at Statewide Summit
to Address Mental Illness Crisis in Local Jails
State College, PA - A two-day summit bringing
together counties from across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania kicked off
Monday as part of Stepping Up, a national initiative to reduce the number of
people with mental illnesses in jails.
The Pennsylvania Stepping Up Summit
will host elected county leaders, state officials, representatives from state
and national organizations, and others to discuss challenges, best practices,
and advance their plans for measuring and reducing the prevalence of mental
illnesses in local jails.
“Despite the best efforts of
communities to make an impact, there are more people with mental illnesses in
local jails than ever before, the majority of which don’t pose a public safety
risk,” said John Wetzel, secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections
and board member of The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center. “I
applaud the counties and leaders who are coming together to evaluate what their
jails are doing and defining concrete steps so that they can take action and
measure progress once they return home.”
Pennsylvania has already advanced a number of
innovative strategies to fund treatment, supervision, and community support for
people with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system, including
establishing Criminal Justice Advisory Boards in nearly every county in the
state, providing innovation grants that focus on diversion programs,
establishing funding for housing supports, and improving information sharing
processes as well as mapping existing services in local communities.
In addition,
Dauphin County, PA, launched a data-driven project, guided in part by technical
assistance from the CSG Justice Center, to reduce the number of people with
mental illnesses their jail. The findings from the project will be used to develop
a plan to address the issue through policy and programming recommendations by
April 2018.
“The Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania has already taken major steps to address this issue and now
it’s time to build upon those past successes and chart a path forward to ensure
that people with mental illnesses are getting the care and treatment that they
need while also easing the strain on local budgets and strengthening public
safety,” said Charles Ramsey, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime
and Delinquency.
At the summit, county teams attended working sessions framed
by six questions related to the
commitment of their local leadership, their use of screening and assessments,
the existing level of baseline data in their county, the degree to which they
track progress, and other considerations. As participants, Stepping Up counties receive access to an
online toolkit containing archived webinars, planning tools, resources, and
information on technical assistance and distance-learning opportunities to
assist with their efforts.
“Connecting people
with mental illnesses and substance abuse disorders to the right interventions
so that they can start down the path to recovery is key to reducing the number
of people with mental illnesses in jails,” said Teresa Miller, acting secretary
of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. “This begins by ensuring that
people are correctly assessed for mental illnesses when they are booked into
jail and that we are collecting baseline data at the county level so we
accurately know the size of this problem, how long these people are staying in
jail, what their recidivism rates are, and how many of them are being connected
to services after they leave jail.”
Stepping Up launched in May 2015 as a partnership between the CSG Justice Center, The National Association
of Counties, and The American Psychiatric Association
Foundation. The
initiative has rallied more than 400 counties, representing 40 percent of the
U.S. population, to commit to actions that will help reduce the number of
people with mental illnesses in jails. Those counties include 17 Pennsylvania
counties, many of which were represented at the summit. The Pennsylvania
Stepping Up Initiative was launched at the statewide PCCD conference in April
2016.
“County leaders across the Commonwealth, from jurisdictions
of all sizes, are united around one central truth: Jails should no longer be de
facto mental health treatment facilities,” said Doug Hill, executive director
of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. “Each county no matter
how different in size or population faces its own challenges. This summit will
better position them to address this crisis and implement successful policies
and infrastructure to improve responses to people with mental illnesses in
jails.”
The Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections, Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, the Pennsylvania
Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and the County Commissioners Association
of Pennsylvania were the co-sponsors of the statewide summit, along with the
partners of the national Stepping Up Initiative.
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ABOUT THE STEPPING UP INITIATIVE
Stepping Up is a national initiative to reduce the
number of people with mental illnesses in jails. The initiative—a collaboration
between the Council of State Governments Justice Center, the National
Association of Counties and the American Psychiatric Association
Foundation—asks communities to come together to develop an action plan that can
be used to achieve measurable impact in local criminal justice systems of all
sizes across the country. For more information visit https://stepuptogether.org.
Contact: Allen Houston
Phone: 646-753-0050
Email: ahouston@csg.org