Framingham Jail Diversion Program

In 1992, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and Public Citizen’s Health Research Group released a report entitled Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill: The Abuse of Jails as Mental Hospitals, which revealed alarmingly high numbers of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other severe mental illnesses incarcerated in jails across the country. Most of these people had not committed major crimes, but either had been charged with misdemeanors or minor felonies directly related to the symptoms of their untreated mental illnesses, or had been charged with no crimes at all.

This report found that in the 10 years since the NAMI report was released, little has changed in how people with mental illness are treated in the criminal justice system. Statistics reported by the Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project are staggering. The incidence of serious mental illness among the 10 million people who are booked into US jails each year is 3 to 4 times higher than the rate of 5% found in the general population. The report states “on any given day, the Los Angles county jail holds more people with mental illness than any state hospital or mental health institution in the United States”. The Project also reports that incarcerated people with mental illness receive little if any treatment for their illness, and that often the conditions of incarceration exacerbate their symptoms, frequently lengthening their jail term.


		In 1992, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and Public Citizen’s Health Research Group released a report entitled Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill: The Abuse of Jails as Mental Hospitals, which revealed alarmingly high numbers of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other severe mental illnesses incarcerated in jails across the country. Most of these people had not committed major crimes, but either had been charged with misdemeanors or minor felonies directly related to the symptoms of their untreated mental illnesses, or had been charged with no crimes at all. This report found that in the 10 years since the NAMI report was released, little has changed in how people with mental illness are treated in the criminal justice system. Statistics reported by the Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project are staggering. The incidence of serious mental illness among the 10 million people who are booked into US jails each year is 3 to 4 times higher than the rate of 5% found in the general population. The report states “on any given day, the Los Angles county jail holds more people with mental illness than any state hospital or mental health institution in the United States”. The Project also reports that incarcerated people with mental illness receive little if any treatment for their illness, and that often the conditions of incarceration exacerbate their symptoms, frequently lengthening their jail term.	Advocates own experience has born this out. Advocates has been providing psychiatric emergency services to the Greater Framingham area since 1988. In providing psychiatric emergency services for the Greater Framingham area, our clinicians come in contact with every sector of mental health and substance abuse treatment services including state and private hospitals and emergency rooms, community residential programs, outpatient treatment, private practitioners, homeless shelters, detoxification facilities and day treatment services. Our clinicians also assist in situations involving the police & fire departments, schools, local and state agencies, families, and neighborhoods. A couple of years ago, one of our emergency team supervisors, Greg Wildman was also a trainee to become a police officer. Through his police training, Greg raised the consciousness of our whole team about the tremendous overlap between mental health services and law enforcement. For the first time, we became aware of how many of the people we serve are also touched by the law enforcement community. We came to understand that as de-institutionalization emptied the state hospitals, many of the same people who previously were trapped in state hospitals are now in jails and prisons. We also realized that although we interacted with many of the same people, and what we did strongly impacted each other, our emergency services team and the police were not coordinating their services, or even meeting regularly to problem-solve.

		© 2004 Advocates Inc. / Framingham Police Department