Ballot Issue: This is about making our community better
During the interview process for this position, I visited with numerous people from the community. One of the things that stood out to me the most was how this community supported mental health services.
Since becoming CEO of the Bert Nash Center nine months ago, I have been even more impressed with the community’s commitment to providing comprehensive behavioral health services for its residents.
Lawrence and Douglas County have a long history of supporting mental health services. That’s why the Bert Nash Center was started almost 68 years ago, because community leaders wanted to continue the work that Dr. Bert Nash had started.
In that same spirit, community leaders and local nonprofit agencies, after years of study, have put together a plan to improve mental health services for people who need it the most, including individuals who are incarcerated, or homeless, as well as those who are experiencing a mental health crisis.
This community, more than any other community in Kansas, has proven that it cares about issues that are addressed in this plan the county has put forward. Issues like finding alternatives to incarceration; bolstering a nationally recognized reentry program that serves individuals where they are — in jail — in the hopes they will never be incarcerated again; and adding a specialty unit at the jail for those people who have mental illnesses. This includes funding for a 24/7 crisis intervention center that would become part of a mental health campus, which incorporates Bert Nash and Lawrence Memorial Hospital as well as other partnering agencies such as the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority, DCCCA, Heartland RADAC, and Heartland Community Health Center. This comprehensive plan, which would include temporary and permanent supported housing for individuals with behavioral health issues, is consistent with our community’s values.
Both of these projects included in the county’s plan are about community health. We don’t only need more space at the jail, but we need different space at the jail. What is being proposed for the jail really is a remodeling. This issue is not just about pure square footage, but it is how that square footage is better laid out to meet the needs of individuals the county is entrusted to serve. Jail is not prison. Jails don’t warehouse people; the goal is to rehabilitate and return people to the community, better than they were and to wrap services around them once they leave the jail. Douglas County’s jail transition program has been a model for the nation. Instead of a revolving door at the jail, the community’s money is better spent to set individuals on a path forward so they can contribute to society, rather than be a drain on it.
Douglas County has the second-lowest incarceration rate in the state and about one-third of the incarceration rate nationally. We can all agree that we are against mass incarceration. And that’s not what we’re talking about with this plan. Really what we’re talking about is a reconfiguration of the current jail to provide a safer, more therapeutic environment. This proposal doesn’t mean we want to jail more people. It means we want to provide
better services for those who are at the greatest risk, such as people who have mental illness or who have developmental disabilities, as well as female and transgender inmates. This is at the very heart of what we have historically done in Douglas County — caring for the disadvantaged among us. That’s what this plan will do.
All of this is designed to keep people from being incarcerated who shouldn’t be incarcerated, and to provide services to those who have to be incarcerated, so they don’t stay in jail, or they don’t return there. There is a direct link to the recidivism rate when individuals can participate in programs like this. The attitude in this community has always been how we can keep people out of the jail. Bert Nash currently has staff located at the jail to provide services for those with a mental illness as well as working with the reentry program. We are one of only two community mental health centers in the state that has a partnership with the county jail to provide mental health services to inmates.
These ballot issues are part of the community’s overall behavioral health plan, which already includes programs that are up and running, such as a behavioral health court, a co-responder mental health team, and the jail reentry program. But when the county outsources inmates to other locations because of space limitations, the impact of sending people to other jails is not just financial. The greatest impact is those individuals do not have access to our re-entry programs and they lose the benefit of being in Douglas County where they have access to family supports and work release programs. The proposed renovation would give the re-entry and work release programs the space they desperately need to continue to thrive, reduce recidivism and change lives. What we’re talking about is providing a jail that functions humanely, with safety, and that will provide better services so people won’t return.
The crisis intervention center is an important piece of the community’s comprehensive behavioral health plan and will only be added through the ballot issue. The crisis center, which would be located across the street from the Bert Nash Center, will be a community facility; it’s not intended to be an alternate jail. But with a crisis center we will be able to avoid incarceration for some people because the crisis services that will be available. The crisis center will be a qualitative improvement as far as what Bert Nash is doing in the community. This will give us programming 24 hours a day for everyone who needs services.
Both the Douglas County Correctional Facility and the Community Health Facility, which houses the Bert Nash Center, were built in 1999 and have served Douglas County with only minor modifications in the past 19 years. The question before voters is not whether to improve the jail, but how to finance the project. If the proposal to restructure the jail is financed through a sales tax, it will also allow us to fund these other mental health initiatives and will help Bert Nash fulfill our mission to respond to needs, restore lives and build a healthy community for the people of Douglas County – even those behind bars. The more I have learned about this project, the more passionate of a supporter I have become. There’s a price tag attached to this proposal, but there’s an even greater price tag for not doing it.
You will be seeing a lot more about the ballot questions as the May election grows closer. I encourage you to get the facts. These can be complex issues, but it is a no-brainer if we as a community want to continue to improve and expand mental health services to meeting the growing needs of all Douglas County residents.
