This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Jim Winder runs a jail, not a hospital. And he is rightly more than a little upset that there are some people — including, apparently, a fair number of state lawmakers — who can't tell the difference.
As sheriff of Salt Lake County, Winder is responsible for holding people who have been arrested for various crimes, from petty to violent, until they have gone to trial or made bail. Unfortunately, for him and for them, at any given time a great many of those being held really don't belong in a jail, no matter what they are accused of doing. They belong in a mental hospital.
But Utah has neither the budget nor the legal requirements to promptly move mentally ill people out of the mainstream of the criminal justice system and into the mental health treatment system. That leaves people who are in no state to participate in their defense, and may not even understand what is happening, languishing in jail until there is room for them in a hospital or other treatment facility.
Sometimes, they stay there for more than a year, longer than they would be held if they were convicted of the crime that got them arrested and sentenced to jail or prison.
The results are many. All bad. Or, in the sheriff's apt word, "abhorrent."
People who desperately need treatment aren't getting it. Even when trained counselors come around from time to time to check on them, they aren't getting any of the help they need to turn their lives around. And to not steal from you the next time.
The jail is full. That costs taxpayers some $92 per day per inmate. It pushes the jail to release, or never book in, accused criminals who otherwise might be taken off the streets.
The Utah Disability Law Center has filed suit to get the state to create, and fund, a system that will do the right things about mentally ill jail inmates. Settlement talks have been going on for a long time. But the state's lawyers can't make any promises unless the Legislature funds them. Which, for a long time now, it hasn't.
The easiest way to make a big difference would have been to expand Medicaid under the original provisions of the Affordable Care Act. That would have pumped a lot more federal money into the system that treats the poor, including their mental illnesses, and taken a significant amount of pressure off all the state's jails and prisons, saving lives and saving Utah taxpayers a lot of money.
The Republicans who run Utah should be sure and mention that to the Republicans who run Washington as they embark on their "repeal and replace" of Obamacare.