As Bexar County’s jail population continues to strain under the weight of untreated mental illness and substance use, local officials are weighing a different approach: diverting some people away from incarceration and straight into treatment before they become entrenched in the justice system.
Last month, San Antonio City Council’s Public Safety Committee advanced a Council Consideration Request filed by Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) calling for a joint city-county ad hoc committee to explore a centralized diversion and recovery system. The proposal, which includes supporting a feasibility study for a potential diversion center, is set to be briefed during a Feb. 11 City Council B Session.
The discussion comes as there is mounting pressure on the Bexar County Jail, where Sheriff Javier Salazar has repeatedly said the facility has become a de facto mental health provider for hundreds of people who do not need to be incarcerated.
At the same time, the region’s mental health authority, the Center for Health Care Services, has warned that gaps in early assessment and treatment are pushing people deeper into the system — often with worse outcomes.
To better understand what a diversion center could mean for the jail, public safety and access to care, the San Antonio Report sat down with Sheriff Salazar and CHCS President and CEO Jelynne LeBlanc-Jamison. They discussed where the current system breaks down, how diversion could ease pressure on the jail, and why continuing to rely on incarceration to address behavioral health crises is unsustainable.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
For readers hearing about this for the first time, what is a diversion center? How would it change what happens today when someone with mental illness gets arrested?
Leblanc-Jamison: It’s an alternative to jail for people who live with mental health or substance use issues, who get engaged with law enforcement and they have violated low-level events like criminal trespassing, and our laws have rules about that. And so, you lead law enforcement with no other option, but to bring them to jail.
Other communities have options like diversion centers and they are therapeutic alternatives to jail, so that these individuals can voluntarily choose to go to them. They can make a choice: jail or diversion, and begin treatment at the right time. It avoids our sheriff having to run the largest mental health hospital in South Texas, that’s what it will do.
Salazar: I’m a fan of the concept. I can tell you at any given time we’ve got several hundred people that don’t need to be here. I’m of the opinion that we don’t necessarily need a new jail, we need to make better use of the jail space we have, and it starts with getting people out of here that don’t need to be here.
Where is the current system breaking down and why are so many people with behavioral health needs still ending up in jail instead of care?
Leblanc-Jamison: Bexar County recently made decisions to remove CHCS from the assessment process at jail intake. We had an opportunity in the jail for us to assess individuals and authorize them for services in an outpatient setting. But Bexar County Commissioner’s Court recently made that decision to stop that activity. Basically making the decision to keep everyone in jail.
One would really have to question their values at that point. Prior to Oct. 1, CHCS was present and we would make hundreds of recommendations for diversions and less than 100 would be approved, so it was already a broken system before Oct. 1. It’s even more broken today, because no one is being diverted for treatment.
Very few individuals receive diversion. If you are eligible for a personal recognizance bond, you might get out. If not, you’re kept in jail. It adds to the anxiety of those individuals living with mental health disorders while adding to the pressures that the sheriff’s department has to manage, given the jail population.
What would a diversion center change inside the jail in terms of population pressure, medical strain and safety for staff and inmates?
Salazar: Once somebody enters the system and has been through the magistrate process, they’re stuck in jail. And if we don’t find out about their mental health needs until several days, weeks, maybe even months into their stay, it’s a problem.
It’s harder to undo what has already been done at that point. It just stands to reason that if you get a diversion point very early in that process, someone can say, ‘This person doesn’t have any business even being magistrated. Let’s figure out a way to get them elsewhere.’ Then they never enter the system in the first place and we’re able to make better use of that jail space that they would have occupied. Not only that but from a human rights perspective, we get these folks diverted off to something that’s more appropriate to whatever their needs are.
For people who believe the answer to public safety is more arrests and longer jail time, what’s your response?
Leblanc-Jamison: As a country, we have forced law enforcement to solve all of our issues every time there is someone out of sorts or not following the norms, we put it on law enforcement to solve it. That’s unfair and they don’t have all the resources to do that and locking them up in prison is not the answer, look at the state prison system. They have taken over our state hospital system because they’re moving individuals out of our prisons into a hospital setting to try to restore their mental health.
Just the data alone shows that this has not worked for us, and we need to assist law enforcement by identifying those individuals that need treatment and get them into treatment and not relying on law enforcement to solve all of it. Which they are not hired or trained to solve it’s not fair. It’s time for us to embrace it and get over the stigma and create systems and access to care so people can get the treatment that they deserve.
Salazar: The people that say, ‘I want to be tough on crime,’ forget that this is not a prison. This is a jail. It’s temporary housing, a temporary stop off point.
Bexar County has been accused of being soft on crime for some time but if that were the case, our jail wouldn’t be busting at the seams right now. We wouldn’t be housing out in two additional county jails in the state while looking for a third and probably a fourth at some point if we don’t change the way we’re doing things.
It’s not a matter of being tough or not tough on crime, It’s working smarter with the resources we have in front of us. If the only tool you have in your toolbox is a hammer, then pretty soon the entire world begins to look like a nail.
I know, that sounds very kitschy to say, but it’s the truth. You’ve got to have more than one approach, locking everybody up and throwing away the key doesn’t work.
For example, getting to the root of why a person is doing what they do? Oh maybe, they’re a veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and they’re off their meds. Well, then there’s a better way of handling that individual than just locking them up and throwing the key away.
If we keep warehousing human beings, like we’re forced to do, because there’s few options then, yeah, bad things are going to happen. Your suicides are going to go up, your medical incidents are gonna go up or you can get smarter on things and realize that jail is not the most appropriate setting for everybody and better outcomes will start happening for us.
What would be the biggest challenge, risk or mistake you could see with this approach?
Leblanc-Jamison: Not investing in it would be the biggest mistake.
Salazar: The risk is to keep doing what we’re doing and not changing anything. We got a jail again that’s bursting at the seams. Every commissioner’s court meeting there’s always talk of either overtime or the cost to house out inmates in other jails, and I’m sitting here saying, ‘both of those things would go away if we would stop relying on the jail to fix all of society’s issues.’
