Having secured a $176,154 state grant for 2010, Lancaster County’s Mental Health Court should be ready to begin operations by March, according to Mark Wilson, County Director of Adult Probation and Parole Services. This will conclude a lengthy process that began two years ago when the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency selected Lancaster as one of nine counties to receive planning and development grants to ultimately establish special courts such as this.
According to Wilson, the purpose of Lancaster’s Mental Health Court will be to provide an appropriate legal response to offenders who suffer from significant psychological complications: “The whole point is to divert individuals with serious mental illness from the criminal justice system into treatment or the mental health system.”
Wilson continued, “The ones who do end up being charged—they may or may not end up being incarcerated—but the idea is to divert them from jail into mental health court….[We will] get them out, get them stabilized on medication and whatever other needs they may have,…and keep them from coming back.”
Once up and running, the Mental Health Court will receive referred cases from Magesterial District Judges who suspect symptoms of mental illness from a given defendant. Part of the state grant will also be used to fund psychiatric evaluations and required treatments, Wilson said. Combining state grant dollars with existing County personel resources, the Mental Health Court will also provide a special probation officer, a case manager, and a housing specialist.
Ultimately, the motivation for this initiative is firmly rooted in cost savings. Wilson told NewsLanc that “if you look at the cost per day to house a…non-seriously mental ill inmate versus somebody who needs medication, treatment, and that sort of thing, those costs can skyrocket.”
