Houston Landing : Nearly 200 people with mental illnesses died in Texas jails. The death toll is getting worse.
June 7, 2023
The Houston Landing examined thousands of public records to determine how many people who died from homicides, suicides and other unnatural causes in the custody of county and municipal jails across the greater Houston area over the last decade had previously exhibited mental health symptoms that were documented by court, jail or law enforcement personnel.
Topics: 2023news, Custody Death, Jail Conditions, Medical
The Houston Landing found that the number of people flagged as mentally ill who died in the custody of Texas’ jails in 2022 had increased nearly 1,200 percent since 2012, from three deaths to 38 last year.
In fact, more than half of the 68 people who died in jail custody across the state last year had been identified as mentally ill at least once since the 1980s.
The findings “open up a whole other Pandora’s box of questions as to why these people ended up in county jails,” Gundu said. “As a state, we are still not asking ourselves the hard questions as to why we are in this mess today and how we got here. And unless we do, we will keep wasting funds in the wrong end of the system … instead of investing in front end, upstream, preventive solutions.”
This is the kind of data analysis that our state agencies such as the Dept of Health and Human Services, the Local Mental Health Authorities and the TX Commission on Jail Standards should be urgently engaged in, if they’re genuinely serious about addressing the crisis of the growing population in our jails of people with mental illness and disabilities.
The Houston Landing’s findings are deeply disturbing and open up a whole other Pandora’s box of questions as to why these people ended up in county jails. How many were on the forensic waitlist when they died? How many were active clients of their LMHA when they were arrested? What triggered their arrest? How many were documented to have special needs &/IDD such as Fred Harris and Evan Lee? How many were arrested from behavioral hospitals and group homes in criss where they went to get help? What could have been done differently in the community to prevent their arrest and subsequent death in the jail?
As a state, we are still not asking ourselves the hard questions as to why we are in this mess today and how we got here. And unless we do, we will keep wasting funds in the wrong end of the system in programs such as Jail Based Competency Restoration instead of investing in front end, upstream, preventive solutions.
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You can read the story here and search our database of names here.