Mental health causing strain on South Georgia’s correction system

ALBANY, Ga. (WALB) - Isolated, confined and shut off from the rest of the world. That’s how inmates spend their days incarcerated and, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2 in 5 adults experience that while battling mental health illnesses.

While Mental Health Awareness Month is coming to an end, the crisis is never-ending. Here in South Georgia, some sheriff’s offices are saying their jails and prisons are becoming mental health facility substitutes.

“It is a disgrace in Georgia that the number-one place for mental health and substance abuse treatment are our jails and prisons. That’s not acceptable,” Jeff Breedlove, chief of policy at Georgia Council for Recovery, said.

It’s an issue some South Georgia sheriffs know all too well.

“We’re down here in the far southwest corner, the forgotten part of the state and there’s just nothing here. We have to drive lots of miles transporting the mental patients,” said Seminole County Sheriff Heath Elliott.

After the regional Southwestern State Hospital in Thomasville shut down in 2013, deputies have been forced to transport inmates struggling with mental health issues to other state-run facilities. Some of the closest ones are in Atlanta or Columbus. The Georgia Sheriff’s Association reports that right now, over 400 inmates are being transported throughout the South Georgia region to these facilities.

“It becomes an issue for us because we’re already short-handed ourselves. So when we’re out serving our public, we generally have to take manpower off the road to deal with that mental health crisis,” said Turner County Sheriff Andy Hester.

A 2019 Georgia Department of Corrections fiscal report shows that the average cost to house inmates was $20,000. A 2022 fiscal report shows that an average of over 90,0000 prescriptions a month total up to $34 million. But these inmates are not in jail for no reason. Some have serious offenses as a result of their mental health. Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards said that the process of evaluating defendants’ mental health issues at the start of court proceedings first starts with a motion for an evaluation from the defense attorney, prosecutor or court.

“Now, if a person is determined to be incompetent but not insane, they can be restored to competency by mental health treatment and then later held responsible for whatever charges they may face,” Edwards said.

But Major Joe Clark, a jail administrator for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, says defendants are sitting in jail, waiting for a mental health competency test for an average of 10 months. The challenge of getting those inmates to any available beds at a mental health facility also stands in the way of their freedom.

“The wait time on a bed on average for that is about four months, so you’re looking at 14 months before someone can be tried on their crime. It’s not helping anything because confining someone in a 6 by 10 cell is already stressful enough for someone that doesn’t have a mental health disability; then you have someone that does and it just makes it worse,” Clark said.

All of these issues are something Clark said the Georgia Sheriff’s Association is trying to bring to legislation with proof of the issue through bringing combined data back into the court system. Resources like Mental Health Court have helped some defendants get a step closer to recovery.

“We have an accountability court, which is a court that deals with persons that are involved in drugs and mental health issues and there are probably about 35 participants in it right now. And those individuals go through this court with the notion of bringing them back into the community,” Edwards said.

One fact remained consistent among all these fighters WALB spoke to in their battle against mental health: it will be a war fought for a while that will take everyone to fight it.

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