Tarrant County leaders may expand a program that keeps people with mental illnesses out of the county jail and off the years-long waitlist for state mental health beds.
The Tarrant County Mental Health Jail Diversion Center, located in Fort Worth’s Fairmount neighborhood, opened in 2022 for a two-year pilot. The program allows people with mental health needs, arrested for low-level, nonviolent offenses, to get treatment instead of a jail stay.
People can use the jail diversion center right now if a police officer brings them there instead of the jail. County leaders are thinking about opening the center for people who have already been booked into jail, Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks said Tuesday.
They may also expand the list of charges eligible for diversion.
“It will make a huge difference,” Brooks said.
The center’s advisory committee will hear about the proposals next week, and commissioners will get a briefing about them on the 28th, Brooks said.
What is a diversion center?
Experts and advocates agree that jails are not the ideal treatment location for someone who needs mental health care.
At the diversion center, people get psychiatric care, medical treatment, assistance getting food stamps and Medicaid, connections to further mental health and substance abuse help.
People can also get case management services for up to a year, said Ramey Heddins, the chief of behavioral health at MHMR, the county mental health agency that runs the diversion center.
"The key is not what just happens in the two or three days they're there, but also what happens afterwards," Heddins said.
The diversion center also keeps people from getting stuck in the long waitlist for state mental health beds, Heddins said.
If someone enters the jail and is deemed too mentally ill to stand trial, they undergo a treatment process called "competency restoration.” That often needs to happen in a state mental health hospital, but beds are in short supply. In Tarrant County, some inmates have been waiting for a state mental health bed since 2020.
The same problem exists across Texas. In January, Dallas County threatened to sue the state if it doesn’t open more mental health beds.
Dallas County officials said as of December 2022, the average wait time for a maximum security state bed for a male defendant was 831 days.
Commissioner Manny Ramirez, the former head of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association, expressed support for direct jail-to-diversion center transfers, but cautioned against loosening too many restrictions on who is allowed to go there.
“Someone might have been picked up for criminal trespass, but they may have ten violent felonies on their record,” he said.
Brooks assured Ramirez that people with a history of violent charges will not be allowed in the diversion center.
Serving more people
While the county considers the expansion in eligibility, the diversion center is not running at capacity. The center serves 27 or 28 people a month, when it should be serving that number or more each day, Heddins said.
County Judge Tim O’Hare said Judge Deborah Nekhom of Tarrant County Criminal Court No. 4 planned to hold a meeting with the county’s law enforcement agencies to make sure they are aware of the diversion center as an option.
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