The plodding tedium you’d expect from a virtual state government subcommittee meeting seemed to have settled over the proceedings at the Capitol. The subcommittee members kept their cameras off while HHS deputy executive commissioner Scott Schalchlin updated them on the agency’s efforts to expand the capacity of Texas’ state mental hospital system.
His updates didn’t satisfy Sheriff Dennis Wilson, the committee’s chairman. That's when sparks started flying.
“I’m going to direct a question to you since you’re new to our group: I speak for the Sheriff’s Association of Texas … and those of us who run county jails, we simply want to know what the plan is,” Wilson said.
Wilson heads the Joint Committee on Access and Forensic Services, a group of advocates, law enforcement representatives and policy experts tasked with helping shape HHS’s state mental health services. And he was clearly fed up with HHS.
“As of [Jan. 24], there were 2,127 individuals sitting in county jails court ordered by a district judge to receive state services,” he went on, voice growing louder. “The workforce at the county level is getting weaker and weaker and weaker, and when they bring them to the backdoor of the county jails, we cannot say no, they have to come into our county jails.
“And I’m telling you up front, the system is gonna break soon, because the counties can’t find the employees … to give the services that are court ordered, from the state.”
Wilson’s sharp response to the state commissioner channeled frustrations local advocates and families of those with mental illness have been voicing for months.
Since well before the pandemic began, a growing number of people with mental illness have been forced to sit in county jails, awaiting court-ordered "competency restoration" treatment in a state mental hospital.
Texas laws are meant to protect people with mental illness from criminal prosecution if experts conclude they were suffering a mental health crisis when they allegedly committed a crime."It’s heartbreaking to see these people that have to stay in our jails week after week, month after month, year after year, and we still can’t get them in the hospital.” - Sheriff Dennis Wilson
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The Texas Health and Human Services Commission and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice administer "competency restoration" programs to these individuals. The goal is not therapeutic; they aim to restore individuals' psychological state to the minimum threshold of mental function necessary to prosecute them.
The waitlist has continued to climb during the pandemic. In October, it hit what was then a new all-time high of 1,813. Then it broke another record on Monday last week, when the subcommittee reported that 2,127 people were awaiting competency restoration in county jails.
“Please drop down to the county level and see what we’re experiencing,” Wilson told Schalchlin. “Because it’s heartbreaking to see these people that have to stay in our jails week after week, month after month, year after year, and we still can’t get them in the hospital.”
Krish Gundu, Texas Jail Project's co-founder and executive director, warned in October that the growing waitlist will make life a lot harder for Texans with mental illnesses who are caught up in the justice system.
"Every stakeholder in the healthcare and criminal punishment system can choose to prevent vulnerable folks from being stuck on the competency restoration waitlist," she said. "We have a moral obligation to do everything in our power to reduce the waitlist."
Replying to Wilson, Schalchlin said, "I don’t know if I’m fully ready to answer that question."
He then told Wilson he was "happy to come back to the next meeting" after working with others at HHS, so that they could “lay out some of the things that we’re doing to try to provide more support to the counties.”
The subcommittee’s next meeting is scheduled for May.
