WA must finally address mental health delays in jails. The cruelty is staggering | Opinion

The time for talk and legal wrangling are over.

The continued failure of Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services to provide jail inmates with court-ordered mental health treatment by the deadlines mandated by a federal class-action settlement must finally be addressed.

It’s a problem we know all too well in Tacoma and Pierce County. Most recently, it was the impetus for a harsh but justified ruling by Pierce County Superior Court Judge Joseph Evans.

As The News Tribune’s Jared Brown reported, in January Evans issued a ruling in a response to a contempt motion filed by Pierce County that would impose thousands of dollars in fines against DSHS for failing to live up to the pledge of the settlement in a federal class-action case known as Trueblood. Filed in 2014, that case was spurred by unconstitutional delays in mental competency evaluations and restoration services for jailed defendants facing criminal charges. Its 2018 settlement established the supposed treatment deadlines we know today for inmates across the state — court-ordered competency evaluations within 14 days, and, if deemed necessary, mental health competency restoration services within seven days of the ruling.

Unfortunately, as the motion filed by the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office and DSHS’s data make clear, those deadlines seem to be meaningless. It’s the same story for much of the state, including King County, where a similar contempt motion was filed. Disability Rights Washington also has filed a Trueblood-related motion in federal court, as the Seattle Times has recently reported.

All told, it’s a problem and why Evans ordered the state to pay $300 per day in the cases of about 40 Pierce County defendants whose transfers were delayed, a group that faced charges ranging from homicide to car theft. Some have had charges dismissed or have since been transferred. In October, Evans noted that many of those defendants essentially served whatever their sentences would have been if convicted. The state has appealed Evans’ decision.

Then there’s the bigger picture: In Washington, the bottleneck created by a lack of psychiatric beds, a lack of qualified providers and a lack of political will doesn’t just bog down our jails and our courtrooms.

It inflicts unnecessary harm and suffering on defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial without treatment, while also undercutting the very bedrock of our system — constitutionality and access to justice.

If we fail to treat people humanely, even if they’re accused of a crime and deserve to face justice, what principles are we adhering to?

So how bad is it? In court filings and through testimony delivered during the recent court proceedings, Pierce County noted defendants have routinely had their transfers to state psychiatric facilities like Western State Hospital delayed well beyond the mandated deadlines.

One defendant languished for nearly 600 days, according to Brown’s reporting.

Another man had been locked up for more than 230 days after his treatment deadline.

Michael Kawamura, who has worked in Pierce County’s public defender office since 1988, most recently as director for the last 15 years, has experienced the problem firsthand. As an attorney, he’s seen clients warehoused in jails for unconscionable periods of time. As a witness to the local wheels of justice, he’s seen the strain it creates.

“The real cost is that you have a high percentage of folks that really are in the wrong place. They’re incarcerated because there’s nowhere else for them to be. You have people that are accused of criminal conduct, who have not been adjudicated as guilty, and they are sitting in jails for weeks or more ... essentially waiting for treatment to determine whether or not they’re competent to even proceed in the criminal process,” Kawamura told The News Tribune this week.

“The needs they have are not being adequately attended to because it’s a jail. It’s not a mental health hospital.”

The outlook for the future should heighten concern. According to DSHS data recently cited by The Seattle Times’ Hannah Furfaro, the need for competency evaluations and restoration services is on the rise. Compared to the previous year, statewide, there was a 37% increase in court-ordered restoration services in 2022, The Times reported. Since 2015 it has more than doubled.

In Pierce County, Kawamura said the data mirrors his experience in the courtroom.

“We’re seeing more folks that have mental health issues, and I’m not talking about low-level mental health issues, significant ones. I’m not a mental health professional, so I don’t have the ability to say why that is. But I know that I know it is,” Kawamura said. “So, as the system gets more and more of these folks, it becomes harder and harder to deal with it.”

That raises the looming yet familiar question: How to deal with it, and more importantly, how to make things better?

Sure, there’s a big new facility in the works at Western State Hospital in Lakewood, but it won’t be completed anytime soon, and given Western State’s track record of care, it would be foolish to bank on the checkered facility as a panacea.

More likely, state lawmakers will need to finally make fully funding and building a better system a priority.

This isn’t about coddling suspected criminals — far from it.

It’s about our values as a society, the ethical standards we hold ourselves to, and people’s civil rights.

“Many of these folks are people that, yeah, they engage in conduct, but they’re engaging in conduct in large part because of mental health problems. And that could be your brother, your son, your husband, someone you know,” Kawamura said. “If you’re dealing with folks that are really that compromised, and this is the best that can be done, I’m not sure that speaks well of the system.”

Washington needs to invest in people, invest in facilities and invest in new ideas to transform what’s clearly broken.

The News Tribune Editorial Board is: Matt Driscoll, opinion editor; Stephanie Pedersen, TNT president and editor; Jim Walton, community representative; Amanda Figueroa, community representative; Kent Hojem, community representative.