Tarrant County will fund its Jail Diversion Center through at least September 2025, filling a funding gap that would have left the program without money by the spring.
The diversion center is a place where people with mental health issues — suspected of low-level, nonviolent crimes — can get treatment instead of jail time. Most people who go to the center are experiencing homelessness and have been picked up for trespassing.
The county’s budget for fiscal year 2025, passed in September, did not allocate any money to the diversion center. The county opened the center in 2022 with federal pandemic relief funding, which was set to run out in April or May.
On Tuesday, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to spend $4.5 million to keep the center running through Sept. 30.
“I have every confidence that future courts will continue to fund this vital piece of our mental health infrastructure,” Democratic County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks said.
The funding comes from a preexisting pool of money for public health initiatives, county budget chief Helen Giese told KERA Tuesday. The county had been looking for alternate ways to fund the program.
“We were looking at various partners, but for the short-term time that we were trying to get this funded, we weren't able to get all of the partners on board,” she said.
On its own, the county can fund the diversion center for at least three years, Giese said, but the county is still looking for help from partnerships, including a potential team-up with John Peter Smith (JPS) Hospital.
My Health My Resources of Tarrant County (MHMR) — the agency that operates the center on the county’s behalf — is also looking for money from the state legislature, which convenes in 2025, Giese said.
The diversion center opened in response to a mental health crisis in the local jail. Sheriff Bill Waybourn – who's in charge of the jail – has said two-thirds of the population inside has a mental health issue.
People in jail who are too mentally ill to participate in their own defense must go through a treatment process called competency restoration, with the goal of stabilizing them enough to understand their charges. Often, competency restoration has to happen in a state psychiatric hospital, but there aren’t enough beds to go around.
The waitlist for a bed stretches months or even years, and while people wait, they’re stuck in jail. Some people end up waiting for a state bed longer than any potential sentence they might receive, MHMR CEO Susan Garnett told KERA last year.
Tarrant County commissioners have advocated for years for a new state psychiatric hospital in Tarrant County, to help alleviate the waitlist problem.
That proposal failed in the 2023 legislative session. On Tuesday, commissioners passed a resolution calling on lawmakers to consider it again during the upcoming 2025 session.
“The Tarrant County Commissioners Court respectfully requests for the State of Texas to provide funding to fill a critical gap in the county’s mental health continuum of care, providing essential services to residents, and alleviating pressure on the county jail and local mental health providers,” Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare read from the resolution.
O’Hare’s office drafted the resolution, which asked lawmakers to either fund a new state psychiatric hospital locally, expand an existing facility with space dedicated to Tarrant County residents, or to fund a partnership with a private facility.
The resolution will be sent to the governor and lieutenant governor, and O’Hare has already begun conversations with state lawmakers about the issue, he said.
Brooks praised O’Hare for his push for more competency restoration beds.
“It is my hope that your prayers, added to the prayers of all the rest of us, will help get those prayers beyond the ceiling so that the legislature will hear them and act,” Brooks said.
The state has worked to shorten the waitlist by expanding its hospital capacity and increasing the salaries of state hospital workers, helping fill staff vacancies.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org. You can follow Miranda on X @MirandaRSuarez.
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