Keep mentally ill out of jails
The Republican chairman and vice chairman of a Mississippi House committee say they will introduce bills in this legislative session to set stricter limits on holding people in jails until they can receive mental health treatment.
It sounds like a no-brainer. Anyone with a shred of decency would object to putting someone who has not committed a crime in a county jail. It still happens in many counties because there’s no place else to keep them.
But this occurs far more often than it should. Last year, the Mississippi Today website and ProPublica reported that hundreds of people in the state each year are held in a jail while they await mental health treatment through the civil commitment process.
A recent Mississippi Today story added, “At least 14 Mississippians have died following incarceration during commitment proceedings since 2006, and no other state routinely jails people for days or weeks without charges during the commitment process.”
Rep. Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, chairman of the House Public Health Committee, and his vice chairman, Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, say they plan bills that would address many aspects of the civil commitment process, including limits on jailing people who are waiting for treatment but are not accused of a crime.
State law currently says people detained by a judge before their commitment hearing can only be held in a jail if the court finds “no reasonable alternative.” The two legislators say the standard needs to be even higher than that.
The problem, of course, is money. Mississippi Today quoted the Lee County chancery clerk, who said it costs about $40 a day to keep someone in jail. But it can cost up to $500 a day to keep a person in a hospital before their mental health commitment hearing.
That math is easy. Using Lee County’s numbers, if it takes two weeks before a person gets a court hearing, it costs a county $560 to hold him in jail. But keeping him in a hospital costs up to $7,000. It may be that judges in rural counties with limited budgets decide that the more expensive option is not a reasonable alternative.
Wendy Bailey, the Department of Mental Health director, said the agency has reviewed mental health commitment laws in five states. Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia prohibit jailing people without criminal charges during the commitment process. Minnesota and South Dakota strictly limit the practice.
Many counties are certain to oppose this legislation if they believe it will increase their costs substantially. Lawmakers would be wise to set a limit on a county’s costs for these situations.
Still, there is something disturbing about putting a non-criminal mentally ill person in jail just because there’s nowhere else to hold him. If Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia figured out how to prevent this from happening, Mississippi can do it too.
Industry’s I-55 dividing line
Democratic lawmakers are grumbling that Mississippi’s biggest economic development victories, like the electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant announced this month, always wind up in certain parts of the state.
The two areas being ignored, they said, are west of Interstate 55: the Delta and Southwest Mississippi, which happen to be two areas of the state with a higher percentage of Black residents.
The lawmakers are correct. The supersized economic development projects in recent years that have received many, many millions of dollars in state assistance tend to land in Northeast Mississippi and East Mississippi.
There are exceptions, such as the Nissan assembly plant in Canton and the Continental Tire plant in Clinton. But Nissan is right on I-55 and Continental Tire is only a few miles to the west of it. When it comes to state investment to attract industry, the Delta and Southwest Mississippi are getting the short end of the stick. There’s simply no way to argue otherwise.
The Democratic lawmakers blame Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. Conceivably, he or his people at the Mississippi Development Authority could be nudging big projects toward counties that supported Reeves during his two campaigns for governor. But in the 2023 election, Brandon Presley beat Reeves by 224 votes in Marshall County. So there are different issues in play.
One problem may be that the western part of the state has been losing residents. The rate of emigration is greater in the Delta, but the southwest part of the state also is struggling to keep people. It’s difficult to convince large employers to give these areas a try when their own residents are looking elsewhere.
Then there are the topics we always hear about, usually involving education or health, whenever Mississippi is 49th or 50th in some national ranking.
A third area of concern is the inability or unwillingness of some counties to work together.
For a number of years, state developers have told local officials that the best way to get the attention of large industrial projects is to form regional alliances of multiple counties. Until the state’s western counties catch up with other areas, they will continue lagging in the recruitment of large projects.
The Democratic distrust of Reeves is understandable. But the skepticism about the location of the battery project may be misguided. Different questions should be asked.
For example, the property where the plant will be built is right on the Tennessee line. An amendment to the bill for the Marshall County project would have required 70% of the plant’s jobs go to Mississippi residents, but it got voted down. Is the state giving $350 million to an industrial project that may hire a lot of residents from Tennessee? If so, how does this help Mississippi?
As for Marshall County itself, its 33,000 population is not at all lily-white. The 2020 census said the county’s population was 48% white, 44% black and 4% Hispanic. The new plant is certain to employ people of all backgrounds.
It’s also worth noting that Marshall County apparently amassed enough land on its own to create a 3,600-acre industrial park, where the battery plant will be located. That much land is a huge advantage when chasing large projects.
There is a 2,000-acre industrial park in Tunica, but apparently nothing else of that size in the western part of Mississippi. Those counties should start working, individually or in groups, toward acquiring land for industrial development on the same scale as Marshall County.
Now, here’s one area where Reeves and the MDA could help the Delta and Southwest Mississippi. A story on the Mississippi Today website said the state recently invested $1.1 million in Marshall County’s industrial park in advance of the battery plant announcement.
The story also said MDA also put another $15 million into 12 other industrial parks around the state — but not one of the recipients were in the Delta or Southwest Mississippi.
That’s very easy to fix. If the western counties are Mississippi’s “not ready for primetime players” when it comes to big projects, they still have a shot at any number of smaller industrial opportunities. A little help from the state would be greatly appreciated.
Jack Ryan
Enterprise-Journal
