Sheriffs from across Arkansas warn about backlog of mental health evaluation

Arkansas sheriffs say local jails often end up serving as mental health facilities. Members of the Arkansas House and Senate Committees on Public Health, Welfare and Labor met Tuesday afternoon in Fort Smith to hear from the Arkansas Sheriffs Association about jail overcrowding related to the Arkansas State Hospital and Department of Human Services court-ordered detainees.

By: Brett Rains
4029 News

Arkansas sheriffs say local jails often end up serving as mental health facilities.

"At any given time, we can have 40, 50, 60 people that have severe mental illness in our facility," said Sebastian County Sheriff Hobe Runion.

Members of the Arkansas House and Senate Committees on Public Health, Welfare and Labor met Tuesday afternoon in Fort Smith to hear from the Arkansas Sheriffs Association about jail overcrowding related to the Arkansas State Hospital and Department of Human Services court-ordered detainees.

The state hospital is the only psychiatric treatment facility in Arkansas that can forcibly confine a person who has been deemed unfit to stand trial.

According to the director of the Arkansas Sheriffs Association, nearly 500 people are currently detained in county jails while waiting for a court-ordered mental evaluation or who are waiting for space to open up at the 186-bed state hospital in Little Rock, for court-ordered treatment until they are fit to stand trial for the criminal allegations against them.

Runion spoke to legislators about the need to address what he called an inhumane, mid-evil problem.

"We're going to take these people in our society that are the most vulnerable. We're saying they're not fit to stand trial due to mental illness, that they are not responsible for their own actions. And then we're going to lock them up in a cell for, it could be 23 hours a day, and they could be in jail for years-on-end before they ever go down to the Arkansas State Hospital," Runion said.

Washington County Sheriff Jay Cantrell told 40/29 News that the state mental evaluation and treatment backlog is affecting county jails more than ever before.

"It just takes months and sometimes years for a bed to open up," Cantrell said. "I've been doing this for over four decades now. We're the second biggest jail in Arkansas, here in Washington County, and we just see those numbers continue to grow. Most of them are violent offenders that are waiting to get criminally assessed. And just to have them languish, waiting in the county jail, is not going to serve a criminal justice purpose."

Read more here.