Taking on Mental Health Issues with What You Have.

• Author: Sims, Randall C.

OUR FELONY CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM consists of this office and five district courts, three of which have jurisdiction in Randall County, which is outside of my jurisdiction. In 2007, our jurisdiction started an accountability court for probationers with technical violations. After a couple of years, we realized that a vast majority of those in the program had drug problems, so we modified it into a drug court in 2009. In 2014, we added a re-entry court for those returning from Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facilities (SAFPFs). So, we have a history with specialty courts in this jurisdiction.

Most recently, in 2016, we implemented a year-long, felony-level, pre-trial intervention program for veterans and those with mental health by simply using what we had available--AKA no additional funding. To get it off the ground, we included people from the offices of the district attorney, probation, county jail, the local mental health community (Texas Panhandle Center), Veterans Affairs, community mental health care providers, graduate students at West Texas A&M University, and the local defense bar. It has been a huge win for all involved, and it has not cost taxpayers an extra penny.

LAUNCHING THE PROGRAM

When County Judge Nancy Tanner ran for office a couple of years ago, one of her top priorities was to work on the huge mental-health issues in our county jail. Upon taking office January 1, 2015, she hit the ground running with this issue by gathering up stakeholders to come up with a plan for helping defendants (both misdemeanor and felony offenders) with mental illness.

After about a year of development, a mental health docket for misdemeanor offenders was started. As for felonies, we considered both a veterans' court and a mental health court. Both offered features we liked, but both would have required additional funding that was nonexistent in our county. We did not even have enough money for one, much less two, specialty courts. Plus, if we chose one over the other, we would be leaving out people who needed help. That was unacceptable to me and to Jason Howell, an assistant district attorney whom I hired in June 2015. Jason came to us from the Galveston County Criminal District Attorney's Office, where the elected CDA, Jack Roady, had Jason working on that office's veterans program. Jason and I decided we would develop our own mental health intervention program utilizing the assets available to us.

We wanted to address the increasing number of defendants who are either veterans or civilians that have a diagnosed mental health condition or traumatic brain injury. After investigating the traditional mental health and veterans court programs, we decided to implement a homegrown, pre-trial intervention treatment program on a small scale (to gather data and work out the kinks before launching a massive system). We reached out to various groups to be part of the program (more on that later), and not one person turned us down! From the beginning, Jason and I were very optimistic about the plan we developed. Each team member was very excited and glad to be a part of the group that would implement this program.

We intentionally kept the number of participants low (just five people) to see how the idea would work and to keep it manageable. We also limited eligibility to those charged with nonviolent offenses. (Those offenders charged with assaultive offenses can apply but are very heavily scrutinized. We made this...