MACHIAS, Maine — Members of the Washington County board of visitors were told at their annual meeting Wednesday that jail and prison officials are bracing for a cycle of problems as state funding for services for inmates suffering from mental health problems continues to be cut.
The 10-member board visits and monitors the county jail and makes recommendations to the county sheriff. Chairman Sandra Prescott said the group is taking a close look at the erosion of funding for mental health services this year, and its effect on inmates.
In this state budget year, the Washington County Jail is expected to lose $125,000 in state funding as well as the jail’s only mental health counselor, whose Department of Health and Human Services job is on the chopping block. Officials told the board of visitors that nearly every jail inmate suffers from mental health or substance abuse issues and until those issues are dealt with, the jail will have a revolving door.
“The people we are getting have more severe mental health issues and conditions than in the past,” Lt. Mary Zidalis of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office told the board. “And once they have been arrested and jailed, it is much harder to get people into hospital care.”
The sheriff’s office, which administers the jail, estimates that half of all inmates at the Washington County Jail are on some sort of psychotropic drug for mental problems.
Ann O’Brien, a board member and the only psychiatric nurse practitioner in Washington County, said she attended a meeting of area health care providers Tuesday in Eastport where participants were bemoaning the fact that no facility in the county has an emergency, major mental health crisis bed.
“I told them that we do. It’s the jail,” she said.
Recognizing that many people continue to interact with law enforcement not necessarily because they are bad, but because they are ill, Sheriff Donnie Smith told the board, “You cannot arrest your way out of this problem. Particularly with mental health issues, if we — the jails — don’t provide these services, the whole system implodes.”
Carlotta “Dee” Bassano, district attorney for Washington and Hancock counties, said she has an “endless number of cases” that are rooted in mental health or substance abuse problems, or both. “It is so frustrating.”
Dale McGee of the Bangor Veterans Center said that 93 percent of all state and county inmates eventually will be released and returned to their families and communities.
“But we haven’t made them better,” McGee said. “We may not be able to arrest ourselves out of the problem, but I believe we can treat our way out of it.”
Capt. Robert Gross, Washington County Jail administrator, said that because of cuts in staffing pushed by smaller budgets — not space problems — jails in Cumberland, York and Somerset counties are all refusing to take new prisoners.
“Riverview [Psychiatric Center in Augusta] is full. There is no room,’’ Gross said. “The whole system is bogged down.”
Several board members said the problem in Washington County will only escalate as the local jail, Down East Correctional Facility, and local service providers begin to feel the deep effects of state budget cuts for rehabilitation or treatment programs. They were especially critical of the way methadone clinics are operated and are afraid similar effects will be felt if state mental health services are privatized, as suggested by Gov. Paul LePage.
“The state has done such a poor job [with the methadone clinics],” McGee said. “It is about making money, not treatment. If this was about treatment, clients would have one-on-one counseling, go to Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, have group counseling and a plan for the future. This is not happening.”
It is not uncommon, he said, for people to end up in the methadone program for six or seven years. “There is no incentive for them to get out.” Everyone at the meeting favored the state’s proposal to have all methadone recipients out of the program by the end of two years of service.
“The problem with privatization is there is no motivation to discontinue care. There is no payoff to wean a client. This is not treatment,” said Betsy Jaegerman, a probation officer in Washington County for the past 34 years. She said clients often stay on the methadone program because they get a mileage reimbursement for driving to Calais for the medication.
“They are telling me they are paying their court-ordered restitution with those mileage payments.”
“This country needs to have a serious discussion about how we process inmates,” Smith said. “Something is very, very wrong, not just here, but across the country.”
The first thing Smith said he does when he arrives at work each morning is to check the jail list, and he said he is not surprised when he recognizes most of the names on the intake sheet.
“You know, it is not the jail’s job to rehabilitate or punish,” he said. “It is our job to house and keep inmates safe, and serving their mental health needs is part of that duty.”
Governor LePage’s campaign to reduce taxes is very quickly going to harm Maine, not help it. Just call us North Mississippi or maybe West Albania.
I agree with this this will make matters worse. But then again does anyone really think through on any decisions. What the consequences will be? And how this will effect all health care providers ?
Society pays one way or the other. Either cover the mental and emotional healthcare services for people in need or pay for the jails to house them. My guess is that the cost of repeated stints in a corrections facility is much greater than making sick people better in the first place. I suppose we could embrace the GOP doctrine of just leaving them on the streets for the citizenry to shoot. Messy perhaps but cheap.
And after reading this article, close Dorothy Dix Hospital. The Augusta State Hospital is full and several jails are full and won’t take any more inmates. We don’t have a mental health problem, cut cut,
cut. [sarcasm]
The emergency rooms will be a revolving door for homelessness and increased crime. The jails can only take just so many. We’ve got the summer and fall to see how things develop, after that the winter cold will kill off some of these added homeless people. It’s a horrible thing to say, but someone’s got to state the obvious reality.
As the topic of methadone treatment was discussed in the article, I’ll post this again,:
in regards to the the LD 1840; the bill limiting methadone treatment to 2 years.This goes out to all:
SUBSTANCE ABUSE COUNSELORS WORKING IN METHADONE CLINICS:
1.I encourage you to start reading the writing on the wall.
2.Methadone treatment in Maine will become a thing of the past and has no immediate future.
3.The patients you care for and about will suffer but there is nothing you can do about it in the long run as they are victims of government budgets and the profit driven corporations that employ you.
4. Looks around; it all started when the MaineCare reinbursement rate went down last year.
5. You had to change to group counseling only; this is a money saver for your employer.
6. Lost any staff? You betcha.
7. Don’t assume that staff cuts always come from the bottom up or that your senority or experience makes any difference. It depends on the size of the individual salaries and if lower paid/less qualfied staff can be held in place to do enough work to stay in compliance with State Regs. Management staff can always be” borrowed” parttime from other facilities
8. The weekly MaineCare reinbursement went from $70 to $60.
9. Many noncategorical MaineCare patients lost their coverage and will not likely get it back.
10. The two year treatment cap on LC 1840 will continue this slow death.
11. Upgrade your skills and credentials NOW.
12. Start looking for another job, but not in methadone treatment.
Keep them in there cell. Problem solved. Maybe when the next one gets out and does something stupid for the 2nd 3rd or 25th time the court will sentence them to real time and protect the taxpayers.
but” keeping them in their cell” costs more money.
how, please explain?
The cost to house a prisoner is much greater than providing medication and therapy for the vast majority of people with mental illness. According to a Sun Journal editorial Maine’s annual expenditure per inmate is $93,500. When one looks at the statistics it also becomes clear that the rate of recidivism is very high among those with mental illness. So, the strategy expounded above, that repeatably putting these people in jail will ultimately lead them to learn their lesson, is not founded in fact.
well said.
bunch of incompetent phonies- especially Bassano
LePage owes his private prison buddies who were big contributors to his campaign. He will do anything to fullfill his promise. Private prisons or you can all go to H***
The war on drugs is responsible for these problems, end the war and treat the medical problems which include mental health illnesses and we will be on our way to recovery. Otherwise the problem and the cost will only grow. I don’t understand why people can’t see this.
This is nothing more than a contiuation of policies that were set in motion in the early 60’s. At that time we had a lot of beds for mental health patients. The powers that be decided to redirect their care to an outpatient basis.
Thousands of patients, who had been in mental hospitals for years were sent out into the public with directions to where they were to live, where they were to get their counciling, where to get their meds, and given bus fare.
A great many of these people were so far removed from reality that they ended up dead in alleys. They died from exposure, lack of care, or victims of criminals.
All in the name of saving the tax payers a few bucks
.
I believe that the population of this country was about 150 million in 1960. It has doubled over the last 50 years. Can anyone honestly say that with double the population we can say we only need 1/4 or less the number of mental health beds that we had in 1960?
Now the jails and prisons have become the holding cells for mental health problems, with at least 30% of the inmates classified as having mental health problems.
The answer we get from government is lets just pretend it doesn’t exist and cut the funding. No one is able to put a face on it. They don’t have festering soars, high temperatures, nothing shows up on MRI’s, X-rays, CAT scans, etc. There fore the powers that be have concluded that they shouldn’t spend any money on these problems.
When are we as a nation going to wake up to reality?
The Nation took ‘Sominex tonight and sleep”…………..and are still in La-La Land
One counselor, cannot possibly effectively help the magnitude of inmates and their problems. We must make room in government budgets to help those who cannot help themselves. How idiotic is it to jail someone with severe mental illness.