Bill seeks nursing home unit for aggressive elderly

2-13-15 Iowa:

Iowa would consider setting up a special nursing home unit for elderly people who are combative or sexually aggressive, under a bill that took its first step forward Thursday.

The bill, Senate File 142, comes amid questions about what will be done with elderly psychiatric patients — including four sex offenders — now living at the state mental institution at Clarinda. Gov. Terry Branstad’s administration is moving to close that hospital and another one at Mount Pleasant.

State officials have been talking for several years about designating a nursing home facility for elderly people whose sexual or physical aggression poses a danger to other residents.

The new bill calls for a task force to be formed to look at how the state could set up such a facility, which could be run by the government or by a private agency using state money.

Sex offenders at Clarinda institute taken off registry

This facility is not civil commitment, instead Iowa's mental illness facility.

2-2-2015 Iowa:

Clarinda, Ia. – Four elderly sex offenders who live at the state mental health institute here have been taken off Iowa's public sex-offender registry, raising fears that state officials will quietly transfer the offenders to private nursing homes should the facility be closed.

Opponents of the planned hospital closure have been buzzing about the four offenders' rumored removal from the online registry. State officials confirmed the deletions Monday, but said the action was unrelated to the possible closure of the mental hospital.

Karin Hamilton, a Department of Public Safety administrator who oversees the registry, said her department has removed about 100 sex offenders' names from the public website in the past two months or so. The deletions were due to legal questions over who should be placed on the registry, she said.

The deleted names included the four sex offenders who are committed to a locked unit at the Clarinda mental hospital, she said. The review determined that "incarcerated" offenders need not be listed, she said.

Ramsey County cuts support for sex offender day-treatment center

11-18-2014 Minnesota:

Dane Jorento does the kind of job most people would pay to avoid. For the past nine years, he's been the director of ABC Mental Health Therapy, an East Side day-treatment center that works with sex offenders who suffer from traumatic brain injury, developmental delays, autism and various forms of mental illness.

The nonprofit clinic is one of three agencies in the metro area that offer group therapy to low-IQ sex offenders. They range from peeping Toms to convicted rapists. Of the three agencies, only ABC is targeted to low-income clients.

And within weeks, ABC may close its doors.

Ramsey County made the decision last year to discontinue its two day-treatment therapy contracts by Dec. 31, although the county has offered ABC an extension through March 31, 2015.

"The day treatment services ABC provides are no longer in alignment with the state and county direction towards individualized treatment plans and contemporary evidence-based practices," said John Siqveland, a spokesman for Ramsey County.

R.I. judge remands violent offender with mental illness to hospital, not ACI

11-13-2014 Rhode Island:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Superior Court judge on Wednesday refused to sentence a man to prison for a 2012 assault on staff and patients at the Eleanor Slater Hospital for the mentally ill, saying that he will get credit for having served more than two years at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Judge Netti C. Vogel, spurning a recommendation from a state prosecutor, said Anthony Tavares will be remanded to the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, where he will remain until health-care officials determine that he is no longer a threat to society.

Tavares, 35, who has chronic paranoid schizophrenia, will have his case reviewed every six months.

David A. Levy, his defense lawyer, credited Vogel for making the proper decision. “It’s the right result, certainly,” he said.

Courts keeping mentally ill inmates longer than law allows, audit claims

10-22-2014 Utah:

SALT LAKE CITY — An audit of the Utah State Hospital has found that patients undergoing mental competency evaluations have been kept much longer than state law allows.

The revelation was in an audit of Utah’s Department of Human Services budget that was presented to the Utah State Legislature’s Audit Subcommittee on Tuesday. It found that over the past five years, 64 patients had been kept for more than the state maximum one year stay.

“The longest stay was just over two-and-a-half years,” the audit said.

Under Utah law, the state hospital’s forensic program can keep people accused of third-degree felonies and misdemeanors for up to a year. Capital murder and first- and second-degree felonies can be kept up to 18 months, at which point a judge must review it.

The audit noted that what happens with a defendant “is ultimately the judge’s decision.”

Getting inside a mentally disturbed inmate's head

10-7-2014 National:

Allowing an inmate to believe that you see the world in the same way he does can make the inmate more manageable and less violent to both you and other staff members

A big part of corrections is working with individuals that have mental disabilities. These disabilities may range from something minor, like attitude problems, to something more severe, like a complete altered view of the world.

The argument can be made all day long that as corrections officers we do not have sufficient training to handle these people. However, at the end of the day our training isn't going to change and we are still left having to handle these offenders.

So we have to consider the training that we do have. We receive training in personality types, the ever popular verbal judo, and communication and interviewing; granted not to a large extent, but there is still useful information in there. The thing that makes these techniques effective is that you must get into the subjects head. In the case of "crazy" offenders, that means seeing things through their skewed perception of the world.

Screaming Inmates Make L.A. Rethink Jailing Mentally Ill

9-26-2014 California:

Inmates in suicide-proof gowns scream and bang on their cell doors one floor below Terri McDonald’s office in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. The bedlam is a reminder, if she needs one, that the mentally ill population in the largest U.S. jail system is out of control.

It’s a “shameful social and public-safety issue,” said McDonald, the assistant sheriff who runs Los Angeles County’s jails. “I believe we can do better. I believe at some point in the future we’ll look back and wonder, ‘What took so long?’”

That’s been a question for years. Conditions for mentally ill inmates in the county have been a focus of federal probes since 1997, and the number with psychiatric disorders was an issue in a recent debate over a new jail. Keeping a mentally ill person behind bars can cost more than $50,000 annually, while treatment could run two-thirds less. Criminal justice systems from Seattle to Miami with aggressive jail-diversion efforts have cut inmate headcounts -- and lowered recidivism rates.

L.A. County has taken tentative steps to join them. The board of supervisors in July endorsed the concept of broadbased diversion, and last week pledged $756,000 for a pilot program.