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| Mental Illness Spurs Maine Jail Innovation |
| By Blethen Maine Newspapers |
| Published: 03/05/2003 |
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Androscoggin County Jail is launching a pilot program to train corrections officers how to recognize and calm inmates having a mental health crisis. The approach, designed to avoid tragic outcomes, has worked well for the Portland Police Department and is likely to spread to other Maine prisons and jails. In the Portland model, each shift includes crisis intervention teams - officers who are specially trained to recognize mental illness and to de-escalate behaviors that otherwise could land a person in jail. 'If it can work in the community, I don't know why it can't work inside a jail,' said Carol Carothers, executive director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Maine. 'The way it works in the community, it reduces officer injury and it reduces restraint, and those are really valid things you want to do on the inside.' Androscoggin County Jail plans to have eight to 12 officers take the 40-hour training this summer and hopes to have two crisis-intervention team officers per shift by the fall. 'We all know that institutions are rather traumatic for people that suffer from mental illness,' said Capt. John Lebel, the jail's administrator. 'I'd rather talk someone down any day rather than use force. All that will do is provoke greater force, and it has a tendency to escalate and somebody gets hurt.' The Maine Department of Corrections is considering similar training for officers working in the state prisons. Crisis intervention teams were first assembled in Memphis, Tenn., after a series of incidents in which officers used deadly force in responding to people having psychotic episodes. Since then, the city has trained officers from other departments, including Portland. Now, several Maine communities have given officers training beyond the few hours offered at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. The training makes sense for officers in jails and prisons as well, said Brian Wallace, who is coordinating the program for the mental health organization. 'One of the problems I have in the corrections system is that the person ends up getting punished for their mental illness,' Wallace said. 'The corrections officer is always the first person to see that person when symptoms are first occurring. Hopefully, in these situations an individual will be treated like they are someone with a mental illness, not a person trying to cause a ruckus.' The crisis intervention training is one of several initiatives aimed at improving services for the mentally ill in jails, a group that accounts for about a third of the total inmate population. Jail officials say that number has grown since the state deinstitutionalized many people with mental illness in the early 1990s. Many, they say, are in jail because of behavior associated with their illnesses. Cumberland County won a $900,000 federal grant for a pilot project to coordinate the treatment and services mentally ill inmates receive once they are released from jail, as a way to reduce the likelihood that they will return. Meanwhile, Kennebec and Penobscot counties are experimenting with 'tele-medicine,' which allows inmates to be 'seen' by a psychiatrist or other medical professional via cable video. The technology speeds up medical assessments and cuts the cost of having corrections officers escort inmates to medical visits, Kennebec County Sheriff Everett Flannery said. Lebel said the variety of programs the counties are undertaking should help them all in deciding how to offer the best, most effective services to inmates with mental illness. But Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion, president of the Maine Sheriff's Association, said one drawback is that the improvements increase the role of county jails as mental health facilities, which they are not designed to be. 'This current situation seems to say we're preparing lifeboats to be better equipped to deal with a sinking ship,' Dion said. 'The end game should not be about making us an effective community-based mental health institution.' Communities must do more to prevent the mentally ill from being jailed in the first place, he said. Still, the crisis-intervention team training will provide jail officers with techniques for recognizing certain behaviors, reducing confrontation and making sure people get the treatment they need when they need it. 'Currently, when we have an individual that may be suffering a mental illness episode, if they're exhibiting some self-harm issues, the only thing available to us is what we call 'the black chair,' a restraint chair,' Lebel said. 'It's a wonderful tool in the sense of protecting an individual from harm, but we also know it can be overused. 'This training will give the officers on site the ability to be able to de-escalate an individual acting out more quickly than it would be by just having to either use force if necessary, or even calling a professional in to try and de-escalate the situation that may arise. If that happens on Friday, the person may not see someone with mental health skills until Monday or Tuesday. 'If we're able to articulate to the crisis professionals on the outside what this person is going through, then maybe we'll be able to expedite the services that person might need,' Lebel said. 'And if we're able to get those individuals services, we hope that will limit or reduce the amount of re-offending that person may go through.' |
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