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Lawmakers plan challenge to jail as ‘default place’ for people awaiting psychiatric treatment

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For years, Mississippians have been jailed without criminal charges while they await mental health treatment.

This session, lawmakers will propose bills aiming to significantly curtail that practice, legislators said in interviews last week. And in the House, the measures will be sponsored by the chair and vice chair of the Public Health and Human Services Committee, to which at least some of the proposals may be referred.

“We can’t send people with mental illness to jail because the county doesn’t want to pay” for an alternative, said Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, vice chair of that committee.

No legislation has been filed so far. But Felsher and Rep. Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, the new public health chairman, said they plan to introduce a slate of bills that together would address multiple aspects of the civil commitment process and impose new limits on the jailing of people without criminal charges.

The Department of Mental Health supports those efforts, Director Wendy Bailey said in an email.

Last year, Mississippi Today and ProPublica reported that hundreds of Mississippians are jailed every year without criminal charges while they await mental health treatment through the civil commitment process. At least 14 Mississippians have died following incarceration during commitment proceedings since 2006, and no other state routinely jails people for days or weeks without charges during the commitment process.

Currently, the state’s commitment code says people detained before their commitment hearings “shall not be held in jail unless the court finds that there is no reasonable alternative.”

Felsher said one of his bills will impose stricter limits on the use of jail.

“You have to look for every other alternative before jail would become an option,” he said.

In some counties, Creekmore said, jail is “the default place to put them.”

Bailey told Mississippi Today that her agency had reviewed commitment statutes in states including Minnesota, Tennessee, Alabama, South Dakota, and Virginia. Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia prohibit jailing people without criminal charges during the process. Statues in Minnesota and South Dakota strictly limit it.

“Limits that could be considered include requirements such as a chancellor must issue a specific order for someone to be held in jail, that the person cannot be held in jail unless actively violent, the local mental health authority would offer to provide services while someone is held in jail and limiting the amount of time the person is held in jail,” Bailey wrote.

Bailey has emphasized that she opposes jailing people without criminal charges while they await treatment.

Last year, Creekmore sponsored HB 1222, which became law and requires more mental health training for law enforcement and expanded a court liaison program that aims to help families find treatment options other than civil commitment, if appropriate.

Jailed for lack of health insurance?

Felsher also plans to reintroduce legislation that failed last year, establishing that a person being committed can’t be held in jail just because they are indigent and lack health insurance to pay for treatment. That bill would have required counties to pay for a person’s treatment after their hearing if a publicly funded state hospital or crisis stabilization unit bed is unavailable, capping costs at the Medicaid reimbursement rate.

Harrison County, part of which Felsher represents, and some other counties in the state, such as Neshoba, already pay for private treatment if a public bed is unavailable.

The measures could trigger a fight with counties, many of which are reluctant to spend money to treat people instead of jailing them while they wait for a state-funded bed.

For example, Lee County Chancery Clerk Bill Benson said in an interview that it costs about $40 per day to jail someone in his county. When a county sends a resident to a private hospital, it pays more than $500 a day, according to contracts Mississippi Today reviewed.

At a hearing in November 2022, Felsher asked Benson whether he would support his county paying hospitals to treat county residents as an alternative to jail.

“My supervisors would hang me … if I said yes,” Benson said.

On Thursday, Benson said cost is still an issue. He thinks county leaders would want some assurance that they won’t have to pay for long hospitalizations of a week or more.

“And who is going to be responsible for finding that place to house them?” he said.

According to data from the Department of Mental Health, Lee County jailed 25 people before their admission to a state hospital in fiscal year 2023, detaining them for more than five days on average (a figure that doesn’t include the days they likely spent in jail before their hearings).

Felsher said he thinks county supervisors support keeping people out of jail without criminal charges but could be concerned about costs. He said he hopes to improve access to public treatment so that counties aren’t on the hook.

A pilot project and more

Creekmore said he plans to sponsor a measure requiring an evaluation before commitment paperwork can be filed—a change that would mean someone can’t be detained unless at least one mental health provider has recommended it. Currently, a person can be detained on the basis of a sworn affidavit by anyone alleging that the individual is dangerous to themselves or others because of a mental illness.

Creekmore said he also plans to propose a pilot project that would eliminate jail detentions in participating counties by designating the local crisis stabilization units as the only place deputies can take someone they pick up after an affidavit has been filed. If the person was violent, a deputy would remain with them at the facility for some time period instead of taking them to jail, as sometimes happens now.

“If that can be successful, then maybe that can simplify it for all regions,” Creekmore said.

The proposed pilot would include Region 8 and Region 10, the community mental health centers serving a total of 14 counties around Jackson and east central Mississippi

“The involuntary commitment process is a heart wrenching experience and we, as a society, have a moral and ethical responsibility to put forth our best effort to help these hurting families identify and access the most humane and appropriate environment in our communities,” said Dave Van, the executive director of Region 8, in a text message to Mississippi Today.

A summary of mental health proposals lawmakers are discussing:

Proposals addressing civil commitment:

  • Stricter limits on jail detentions
  • Requiring counties to pay for private treatment if a public bed is unavailable after a judge has ordered someone to receive psychiatric treatment, and capping county costs at the Medicaid rate
  • Prohibiting jailing someone during the commitment process because they can’t pay for treatment
  • Requiring a pre-evaluation before someone can be detained
  • A pilot project to designate the crisis stabilization units in two regions as a “single point of entry” where deputies take people after picking them up and stay with them if necessary, aiming to eliminate jail detentions

Other mental health proposals

  • Expanding Medicaid coverage for people with serious mental illness to pay for supportive housing, aiming to bring new facilities to Mississippi
  • Establishing a mental health peer support program to address suicides among teenagers
  • Requiring the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline to be printed on all state IDs, including student IDs

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1865

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-24 07:00:00

Dec. 24, 1865

The Ku Klux Klan began on Christmas Eve in 1865. Credit: Zinn Education Project

Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others. 

While the first wave of the KKK operated in the South through the 1870s, the second wave spread throughout the U.S., adding Catholics, Jews and others to their enemies’ list. Membership rose to 4 million or so. 

The KKK returned again in the 1950s and 1960s, this time in opposition to the civil rights movement. Despite the history of violence by this organization, the federal government has yet to declare the KKK a terrorist organization.

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

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Mississippi Today

An old drug charge sent her to prison despite a life transformation. Now Georgia Sloan is home

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mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-12-24 04:00:00

CANTON –  Georgia Sloan is home, back from a potentially life-derailing stint in prison that she was determined to instead make meaningful. 

She hadn’t used drugs in three years and she had a life waiting for her outside the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women in Pearl: a daughter she was trying to reunite with, a sick mother and a career where she found purpose. 

During 10 months of incarceration, Sloan, who spent over half of her life using drugs, took classes, read her Bible and helped other women. Her drug possession charge was parole eligible, and the Parole Board approved her for early release. 

At the end of October, she left the prison and returned to Madison County. The next day she was back at work at Musee, a Canton-based bath products company that employs formerly incarcerated women like Sloan and others in the community facing difficulties. She first started working at the company in 2021. 

“This side of life is so beautiful. I would literally hold on to my promise every single minute of the day while I was in (prison),” Sloan told Mississippi Today in December. 

Next year, she is moving into a home in central Mississippi, closer to work and her new support system. Sloan plans to bring her daughter and mother to live with her. Sloan is hopeful of regaining custody of her child, who has been cared for by her aunt on a temporary basis. 

“This is my area now,” she said. “This has become my family, my life. This is where I want my child to grow up. This is where I want to make my life because this is my life.” 

Additionally, Sloan is taking other steps to readjust to life after prison: getting her driver’s license for the first time in over a decade, checking in monthly with her parole officer and paying court-ordered fines and restitution. 

In December 2023, Sloan went to court in Columbus for an old drug possession charge from when she was still using drugs. 

Sloan thought the judge would see how much she had turned her life around through Crossroads Ministries, a nonprofit women’s reentry center she entered in 2021, and Musee. Her boss Leisha Pickering who drove her to court and spoke as a witness on Sloan’s behalf, thought the judge would order house arrest or time served. 

Circuit Judge James “Jim” Kitchens of the 16th District.

Instead, Circuit Judge James Kitchens sentenced her to eight years with four years suspended and probation. 

He seemed doubtful about her transformation, saying she didn’t have a “contrite heart.” By choosing to sell drugs, Kitchens said she was “(making) other people addicts,” according to a transcript of the Dec. 4, 2023, hearing. 

“I felt like my life literally crumbled before my eyes,” Sloan said about her return to prison. “Everything I had worked so hard for, it felt like it had been snatched from me.”

She was taken from the courtroom to the Lowndes County Detention Center, where she spent two months before her transfer to the women’s prison in Rankin County. 

Sloan found the county jail more difficult because there was no separation between everyone there. But the prison had its own challenges, such as violence between inmates and access to drugs, which would have threatened her sobriety. 

She kept busy by taking classes, which helped her set a goal to take college courses one day with a focus on business. Visits, phone calls and letters from family members and staff from Musee and Crossroads were her lifeline. 

“I did not let prison break me, I rose above it, and I got to help restore other ladies,” Sloan said. 

She also helped several women in the prison get to Crossroads – the same program that helped her and others at Musee. 

Sloan credits a long-term commitment to Crossroads and Musee for turning her life around – the places where she said someone believed in her and took a chance on her. 

Georgia Sloan, left, and Leisha Pickering, founder and CEO of Musee Bath, sit for a portrait at the Musee Bath facility in Canton, Miss., on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. Pickering has supported Sloan through her journey of recovery and reentry, providing employment and advocacy as Sloan rebuilds her life after incarceration. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Pickering, Musee’s CEO, said in the three years she’s known Sloan, she’s watched her grow and become a light for others. 

The bath and lifestyle company has employed over 300 formerly incarcerated women in the past dozen years, but Pickering said not everyone has had the same support, advocacy and transformation as Sloan. Regardless, Pickering believes each person is worth fighting for. 

When Sloan isn’t traveling for work to craft markets with Pickering, she shares an office with her Musee colleague Julie Crutcher, who is also formerly incarcerated and a graduate of Crossroads’ programs. She also considers Crutcher a close friend and mentor.

Sloan has traveled to Columbus to see her mother and daughter whom she spent Thanksgiving with. She will see them again for Christmas and celebrate her daughter’s 12th birthday the day after.

Her involvement with the criminal justice system has made Sloan want to advocate for prison reform to help others and be an inspiration to others.

“I never knew what I was capable of,” Sloan said.  “I never knew how much people truly, genuinely love me and love being around me. I never knew how much I could have and how much I could offer the world.”

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1946

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-23 07:00:00

Dec. 23, 1946

Chuck Cooper Credit: Wikipedia

University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

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

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