Do You Want These People Walking Your Streets? Yes, You Probably Do

When Elizabeth and I and our colleagues were developing the policy brief on TBI and PTSD last semester, we focused solely on the Texas state prison system. Within the context of the project, that made perfect sense – we were partnering with TCJC, an organization concerned with the criminal justice system in Texas. But when we take a step back and consider the issue from a state-wide policy perspective, it becomes glaringly obvious that there’s another angle to consider: the role of community mental health services.

The Texas Tribune reports that it takes $12 a day to care for someone in a community-based mental health setting. In contrast, it takes $137 to provide care in a prison. 12 x 12 = 144, so you’re just about squaring the cost there. Too bad there isn’t a way to divert mentally ill prisoners to community treatment…

Oh, but wait! There actually is a way, and they’re called "diversion courts," so named because they’re courts that divert low-level offenders with mental illness into community treatment, rather than putting them in jail. A cost-benefit analysis I dug up concludes that courts like these have been shown to provide “considerable fiscal benefit to taxpayers.” Considerable, in this case, being $1.2 million cross-system in the first 6 months after arrest. And that’s just for one county. Imagine the savings that would accrue if this were implemented statewide!

Now, I hear what you’re saying -- Texas doesn’t necessarily like to try things just because hippie states like California think it’s a good idea. Fair enough. But that cost-benefit analysis? It was done on a diversion court in our very own Bexar County. That court has been operating – and saving taxpayer money – since 2002. Surely by now we have enough evidence to expand the program to other counties.

Expanding diversion courts makes fiscal sense. Cross-system savings implies that the state spends less money across the board: instead of criminal justice spending $137, health and human services spends $12. I’m no mathematician, but even I can figure out that that’s a good deal. But I suspect one of the reasons Texas hasn’t implemented this statewide is because it does shift a lot of the costs from criminal justice to health and human services. We’re Texas, and we’re tough on crime – which means that we’d rather spend money on criminal justice than on community mental health. That perspective is demonstrated by the proposed state budget. Now, don’t get me wrong, the state is proposing budget cuts for everybody. Criminal justice is looking at a 12.7% reduction. But health and human services is facing a 24.6% cut, the highest of any category.