Florida's Miami-Dade County successful jail diversion program creator is leading a week-long summit in Dallas to explain how it could work here.
Retired Florida judge Steve Leifman and his team were invited to present Miami-Dade's Criminal Mental Health Project model here as a less-expensive alternative to sending Dallas County cohorts to Florida.
Employees across county departments — including the Sheriff's Office, District Attorney's office, judges, jail staff and budget teams — had watched the PBS documentary The Definition of Insanity Tuesday night
"It is a baby step process," Leifman said. "First, it's bringing all the stakeholders together."
Commissioner Theresa Daniel said county departments and community organizations have steadily come together.
"In my opinion, we've already started that," Daniel said. "And it has been going on for a number of years, but it's in process, we are someplace in middle. There's been a lot of motion in the right directions."
Leifman said it's clear that people in Dallas are interested in real change.
"They have more people coming than the room will hold tomorrow," he said. "They've had to move people to the next day, so there seems to be great enthusiasm. We don't want to lose it. You have good leadership here. You really do."
Dallas County jail consistently pushes its inmate capacity.
For that reason — and because Lew Sterrett is an aging, outdated facility — county officials have taken steps to build a new jail.
But The Leifman Group preaches, based on data, that no matter how big a jail is, it will always fill up.
The Miami-Dade model combines law enforcement, jail management and lawyers and judges to help offenders with mental health and drug-use issues recover, using peer specialists, housing resources and mental health and substance abuse treatment.
After a successful year, criminal charges are dropped.
That county has curbed jail crowding by decriminalizing mental health-related challenges.
The Miami-Dade Model takes people with mental health issues to a screening center before jail. Those centers handle the offenders first court appearance, too.
Texas law would have to change for that to happen. Here, jails must accept all arrested people.
Dallas County commissioners Andy Sommerman and Theresa Daniel and County Administrator Darryl Martin last year went to Florida to learn more.
Dallas County's jail often operates at 93 to 96 percent capacity — close to its maximum of 7,119 inmates.
Immediate crowding relief here is possible, based on the Miami Model, LaShonda Jefferson told commissioners last summer.
Jefferson is assistant director of Dallas County's Jail Population Management.
"One of the things that they do in Miami-Dade is they do not order competency evaluations on misdemeanor defendants or anyone that is not eligible to go to prison," she said in commissioners court. "I think that's something we could start immediately. Let's not order these competency evaluations on criminal trespass defendants, which makes their stay in jail longer."
That idea includes not ordering assessments on people charged with offenses that do not carry prison sentences.
Nearly 2 million people with serious mental illnesses are booked into United States jails each year.
More than 25,000 annually are jailed in Dallas County compared to Miami-Dade's 11,000.
Inmates with mental illnesses experience longer jail stays, often because evaluation processes take more time.
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