Editor’s Note: This is the final part of a three-part series looking at the Baldwin County Jail.
While day-to-day operations at the Baldwin County Jail often run like clockwork, one issue has the ability to throw a wrench into that system - inmates with mental health issues.
Due to budget cutbacks at the state and federal levels, Alabama’s mental health system is now largely in the hands of state and county jail facilities like Baldwin County’s, which officials say their system was not really designed to handle.
“There are some people here who shouldn’t be here,” Major Jimmy Milton said. “Jail is not where they need to be, but there are absolutely no other resources out there for them to get the help they need for their mental health issues.”
Milton said when it comes to incarcerating people with mental health issues, he and other law enforcement officials seldom have a choice.
“Speaking as a law enforcement officer, if you come across someone in the public that could harm themselves or harm someone else, your hands are tied. We have to take them,” Milton said. “We don’t have the resources where you can put someone somewhere and they can get some sort of treatment for whatever ailment they have. This is it. This jail is the facility.”
Milton said his officers do receive some training to better equip them to handle inmates with mental health issues.
“We receive training, but it’s minimal training,” Milton said. “We’re not trained therapists. That’s not what we’re here to do. it’s unfortunate because we see a number of people that come in here but jail is not where they need to be. But there are absolutely no other resources out there and everyone’s hands are tied.”
Nursing Director Ellen Najdowski said the jail’s medical staff is equipped to try to give as much help as possible to those inmates with mental health problems, but that help isn’t matched with similar follow-up from healthcare when the inmates are released.
“We’re limited because of the outside resources,” Najdowski said. “We can have all the mental health needed in here, but really it’s when they get out where they really need it. In-patient care is limited in our state, which causes a lot of these problems we keep seeing.”
Najdowski said there is a clear cycle of people with mental health issues continuing to come back into the jail facility.
“They’re on the meds here, but they get out and they stop taking the meds because no one is following up with them on the healthcare side,” Najdowski said. “When they get off the meds, they get onto the street drugs, which just exacerbates the mental health condition and they end up back in here. It’s a cycle with a lot of people.”
Milton agreed.
“You can only hold them in this facility for so long and at some point you have to release them, only to have them return again,” Milton said. “It’s a sad sight to see.”
Milton said having inmates with mental illnesses also puts additional strain on the jail’s resources and staff.
“One of the things we try to educate people on is if we have 500-plus inmates and we have someone who comes through the door with an issue with mental health, we have to then divert resources from monitoring those 500 inmates to this one particular individual,” Milton said. “We’ve have five or six people in here at the same time who have had mental health issues, so we’re then dealing with diverting all of our resources to addressing those people when we’ve got 500 other people that are getting minimal attention now.”
The cost of medication and treatments needed is also a concern.
“Some of the medication and treatment can get expensive,” Milton said. “County jails were not designed to go down that roadway. This is not what that was intended for.”
Milton said he and other county law enforcement officials across the state have continued to dialogue and try to find ways to address the problems caused by having to be the primary mental care facility as jails.
“At the end of the day, it all comes down to a dollar bill with this, so we’re all talking and trying to find ways to make sure we’re trying to help these people as best as we can without completely disrupting our system,” Milton said. “But we need additional help. We need the state to address this issue, give us more guidance and hopefully more funding to fix this.”
