Planned diversion center could keep people out of Bexar County jail
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A new center that would divert some people experiencing mental illness or addiction away from the Bexar County jail and into treatment could begin operating in January.
Why it matters: The Bexar County Adult Detention Center has increasingly been under scrutiny from criminal justice reform advocates who say it's had the highest fatality rate among Texas jails over the past decade.
The big picture: The leading causes of death are "natural causes," suicides and accidents, per the San Antonio Current, citing the sheriff's office.
- Local officials have spent the last year planning for a diversion program they hope will prevent deaths.
Driving the news: The City Council and Bexar County Commissioners Court recently approved about $638,000 each for a six-month pilot program to test the model.
- To round out the funding, officials are looking to University Health for another $638,000. That's subject to approval by the health system's board, although it's not clear when board members could take up the funding.
How it works: The Center for Health Care Services, Bexar County's mental health authority, would operate the pilot program with 15 beds out of its Josephine Recovery Center in Government Hill.
- It would accept people from the Central and St. Mary's substation areas who are facing charges of non-residential criminal trespassing and non-residential theft under $100.
- People could stay at the center for up to two weeks with a three-month follow-up period.
By the numbers: More than half (56%) of the 130 people arrested by the Bexar County Sheriff's Office in May on criminal trespassing charges were facing mental health needs, per data officials shared with a City Council committee last month.
What they're saying: "We are monitoring those deaths that have occurred at the jail, and we're looking at the profiles of those individuals," said Jelynne LeBlanc Jamison, CEO of the Center for Health Care Services. "We do believe there were opportunities for many of those individuals to be diverted from jail and into treatment."
- "Maybe they're not necessarily someone who should be taking up a cell in the jail, but need a little bit of restorative justice — some mental health services, maybe some substance abuse services," Precinct 2 Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, who co-chaired a committee of local officials exploring the center, tells Axios.
Zoom in: The goal is to divert people before they land in the jail. Typically, it takes eight to 12 hours for someone to go from arrest into booking at the jail — hours that can risk worsening someone's mental health condition, Alexander Testa, professor at UTHealth Houston who studied the feasibility of a diversion center, told the same council committee.
- The diversion center would allow someone to receive treatment much faster, while reducing the amount of time police officers spend processing someone, Testa said.
The bottom line: "This pilot is long overdue in our community," District 5 Councilmember Teri Castillo, who has pushed for a diversion center, said in a statement. But "there is still work ahead to build a centralized program in San Antonio."