A new facility for Mississippians with mental illness who are involved in the criminal justice system will open early next year. 

The 83-bed maximum-security building at Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield should open in January, Department of Mental Health Executive Director Wendy Bailey told Mississippi Today. 

Once staffed, the new building will bring the state’s forensic bed count to 123, up from 65 current beds.

Officials are hopeful the new building will cut down on wait times for mental health treatment for people in prison. Mississippi has the second-longest wait time for such treatment in the country, according to a study by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center. 

“We are proud to be able to offer this service to Mississipians and to offer this environment to the people that we’re serving and to our staff as well,” she said.  

Forensic services are for people with criminal charges who need mental health treatment before facing trial and people who have been deemed not guilty by reason of insanity.

Agency spokesperson Adam Moore said at the end of August, 68 people were waiting for inpatient evaluation or competency restoration services, he said. Fifty-five of those people were awaiting services from jail. 

The Department of Mental Health plans to permanently close 25 maximum security forensic beds in a 70-year-old facility.

The current maximum security unit has notable deficiencies, including “rampant” plumbing issues, blind corners, no centralized fire suppression system and padlocks on the door, said Dr. Tom Recore, medical director at the Department of Mental Health. It also requires high numbers of personnel to staff. 

The building’s closure has been long awaited. 

“We could have used a new forensic unit 20 years ago,” Bailey said.

In comparison, the new building will be a safe, “therapeutic” environment, she said. 

“If you create a space that folks feel is something worth taking care of, then patients, staff and everyone alike ends up behaving in ways that end up being more prosocial,” Recore said.  

Construction on the new building should be completed in November, said Bailey. The Department of Mental Health will begin a “heavy recruiting effort” to staff the unit this fall.

The Legislature awarded $4 million for six months’ staffing of the new building, given the facility’s mid-fiscal year opening. 

Plans for the new 83-bed building have been in the works for years now, said Bailey. 

In 2016, the department’s forensic services unit was composed of just 35 maximum security beds, she said. 

The Department of Mental Health first put out a bid for preplanning of renovation or replacement of the building in 2018, but the project stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency was forced to reissue a call for bids, with bids coming back “significantly higher” than before, Bailey said. 

Construction costs for the building totalled $36.5 million. The state legislature allocated funding for the project in 2018, 2023 and 2024.

The new facility is a crucial part of building out a “continuum of care” within the state’s forensic system, said Recore. 

The maximum security facility will provide an entry point for people receiving forensic services, but placement in a medium-security unit, group homes and work programs will be options for patients based on a clinical review team’s evaluation. 

The group homes at Central Mississippi Residential Center in Newton have not been staffed yet, but are the next step to creating a more robust continuum of services, said Recore. 

Twenty-four beds will eventually be staffed at Central Mississippi Residential Center, and Recore envisions an outpatient supervision system as the next horizon. 

“And then, you have an actually functioning forensic system in a state that hasn’t had one before,” he said.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

All summer, Christopher Best II eagerly awaited his first day of kindergarten. But instead of joining his classmates at school in August, he stayed at home. 

Five-year-old Christopher depends on a mobile ventilator and a tracheostomy tube to breathe. His doctor recommends that a one-on-one nurse attend school with him to manage his care and respond in case of an emergency.

But two months into the school year, Madison County Schools has not hired a dedicated nurse to care for Christopher, a scenario disability rights advocates say is not uncommon for children with complex medical conditions. 

Emily Catazaro, Christopher’s mother, is frustrated by the delays that have inhibited her son from attending school. 

“He cries every day because he can’t go to school,” said Catazaro, who moved her family from Copiah County based on recommendations from Christopher’s doctors about the special education services in Madison County schools. 

A week before the school year began, district officials informed Catazaro they had assigned an interim nurse to care for Christopher at school. Concerned that the nurse did not have adequate tracheostomy experience, including practice completing an emergency tracheostomy tube change on Christopher, Catazaro, a registered nurse herself, requested that the nurse receive further training. 

But by the time school officials met with Catazaro and agreed to allow her to provide additional training to the nurse on Aug. 13, two weeks later, district staff said they would have to re-offer the position to the interim nurse. 

Since then, neither an interim nor permanent nurse has been assigned to Christopher. Without a nurse to care for him at school, Christopher receives a total of five hours of instruction at home each week. 

On Sept. 30, the district told Catazaro in a meeting it will contract with a private nursing company to provide one-on-one nursing care for Christopher at school. 

A school staff member contacted Catazaro to schedule the meeting Sep. 20, eight days after Mississippi Today reached out to Madison County Schools about Christopher’s case. 

Madison County Schools declined to answer questions about Christopher’s case. The district also declined to respond to inquiries about its special education, one-on-one nursing and homebound instruction policy and staffing, saying those responses could be construed to violate student privacy. 

“The teachers, staff, and administrators of Madison County Schools are committed to ensuring they meet the unique and individualized needs of all their students. The District is committed to following all state and federal laws, regulations, and policies with respect to providing services to its students,” district communications director Gene Graham told Mississippi Today in an email.  

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, first passed in 1975, children with disabilities are entitled to receive a “free appropriate public education” in the least restrictive setting possible. The federal law marked a growing effort to include all children in schools by providing support services to children with disabilities instead of educating them in self-contained classrooms. 

School districts are required by law to provide a full-time nurse to students if their health condition necessitates it, said Lily Moens, Christopher’s attorney and a law fellow at the Mississippi Center for Justice who focuses on special education advocacy. 

Moens spoke to Mississippi Today about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and special education challenges in Mississippi, but did not answer questions about Christopher’s case. 

“There is an obligation for the school to provide an education that is in the least restrictive environment,” she said.

Given Christopher’s dependence on a ventilator, it is “recommended and preferred” that a specially trained, one-on-one nurse care for him during the school day, Christopher’s doctor wrote in a letter provided to the school district.  

Christopher faces severe health risks in the classroom, including low levels of oxygen, which can be difficult to detect without a trained eye, or equipment failure. Because Christopher is non-verbal and predominantly conveys ideas with sign language, it is crucial for him to have a dedicated nurse who can communicate with him and understands his complex health needs, said Catazaro. 

“Christopher is a bright and capable student who deserves the experience of learning in a classroom setting among his peers,” said Christopher’s doctor in the letter. 

Staffing challenges

Staffing shortages can challenge the ideals of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, said Diana Autin, the executive director of National PLACE, a nonprofit membership organization that advocates for families.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages of teachers, speech and occupational therapists and nurses have caused difficulties for school districts aiming to provide adequate special education services to students, she said. 

Registered nurse vacancies at Mississippi hospitals reached their highest numbers in over a decade last year. 

Madison County Schools officials assured Catazaro in a meeting on July 25 that the district would provide a one-on-one nurse for Christopher. 

But there is no enforceable timeline for employing such staff if the school district is not able to hire for the position, said Moens. 

Catazaro herself interviewed for the job and received a rejection letter dated Aug. 21. 

“It is very difficult to get any kind of one-on-one assistance in our state,” said Pam Dollar, the executive director of the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities and Christopher’s advocate through the Mississippi Parent Training and Information Center. “… If the support that a child needs is too costly, the school district is going to push back.” 

The Mississippi Parent Training and Information Center, a program of the Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities, educates parents of children with disabilities about their educational rights and supports them as they navigate the process of developing an individualized education plan with school districts. 

“Especially in regions of the state that are much more underfunded in terms of their local school systems, (staffing) presents a big challenge,” Moens said. 

Madison County School District has the fifth highest revenue of all school districts in the state. It received $189 million from local, state and federal sources during the 2022-2023 school year.

‘He’s getting left behind’

In late April, Christopher began attending Madison County’s public preschool with a one-on-one nurse hired by the school district and trained by Catazaro. 

But as the school year came to a close, Catazaro said she learned that Christopher’s one-on-one nurse would not continue working with him during Extended School Year, a program public schools are required to provide to qualifying students with disabilities. 

She was told a nurse would check on Christopher at 15-minute intervals, despite his doctor’s recommendation that he have a full-time nurse. 

“The nurse will be in Christopher’s ESY classroom to assess him every 15 minutes,” wrote Vicki Doty, the director of special education for Madison County Schools, in an email to Catazaro on June 3, the first day of extended year programming. 

Given his complex health needs, check-ins only every 15 minutes could have dire consequences for Christopher, said Catazaro. 

She opted to remove Christopher from extended school year programming until a one-on-one nurse could be hired, and requested a mediation with the school district to resolve the disagreement. 

Madison County later offered Christopher one additional hour of instruction each week at home to make up for lost extended school year classroom time. 

In mediation, the school requested a medical review from a medical doctor rather than Christopher’s usual nurse practitioner, said Catazaro. After reviewing Christopher’s doctor’s recommendation that he be assigned a one-on-one nurse, the county told Catazaro they would secure a nurse for Christopher while at school.

But two months later, the school still has not provided a nurse.

“What about no child left behind? He’s getting left behind,” Catazaro said.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Oct.1, 1851

Citizens of Syracuse, New York, broke into the city jail and freed William “Jerry” Henry, who had escaped slavery in the South and was now working as a barrel-maker. A monument now honors that rescue. 

Henry, who had been arrested, faced a hearing on whether he would be returned to Missouri and enslaved again. The Rev. Samuel J. May, a Unitarian minister and abolitionist, visited Henry in jail and told him to stay calm. 

“Would you be calm with these irons on you?” Henry asked. “What have I done to be treated so? Take off these handcuffs, and then if I do not fight my way through these fellows that have got me here, then you may make me a slave.” 

May whispered to Henry that they planned to rescue him. May, like others, had been moved by the sight of Henry “dragged through the streets, chained and held down in a cart by four or six others who were upon him; treated as if he were the worst of felons; and learnt that it was only because he had assumed to be what God made him to be, a man, and not a slave — when this came to be known throughout the streets, there was a mighty throbbing of the public heart; an all but unanimous uprising against the outrage. There was no concert of action except that to which a common humanity impelled the people. Indignation flashed from every eye. Abhorrence of the Fugitive Slave Bill poured in burning words from every tongue. The very stones cried out.” 

Henry’s case also drew support from prominent abolitionists Gerrit Smith and Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen, A Methodist minister who had once fled slavery himself. 

At the ring of a church bell, thousands stormed the jail, where Henry was being held, and some began to pelt the jail windows with stones. After a marshal fired a shot, the crowd used a battering ram to break down the jail door and free Henry, whose wounds were treated and his shackles removed. 

Days later, men secretly transported him to an Underground Railroad stop in Mexico, New York, and from there across the border into Canada, where he lived for the next 41 years —free. Oct. 1 became a local holiday known as “Jerry Rescue Day,” the day when people stood up against slavery.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.