Siskiyou County’s mental health court

The California Report Magazine recently reported on how one woman’s cycle of incarceration and mental illness encouraged a rural county to change it’s system. A resident of Siskiyou County, Marlene Baker’s untreated mental illness led her to have frequent contact with law enforcement for minor offenses associated with homelessness, and be repeatedly booked into and released from their overcrowded jail.

Siskiyou County is in far Northern California and spans 6,000 square miles, but is home to just 44,000 people. Many common rural disadvantages intersect for the residents there, such as a lack of public transportation or community healthcare resources.

According to the California Report,

Mental illness plays a role in a high number of criminal cases here. What to do once those people enter the system, said Siskiyou County District Attorney Kirk Andrus, is a vexing question.

“You've got a community that wants to be protected,” he said. “But you also have a person who needs intervention and not necessarily the kind of intervention that we have to offer. It's a massive problem.”

In Baker’s case, though, despite those rural challenges — in some ways because of them — a number of key people took some risks and bent some rules to help her heal in the community, with her freedom intact. And her success is helping to bring about some bold changes in the way Siskiyou County confronts its mental health crisis.

When Baker was charged with a felony, she became a test case for a new way of addressing the intersection of crime and mental illness in the county. The judge, the public defender, county mental health officials, and prosecutor, came to an agreement that instead of returning her to jail or sending her to a state hospital, they would try to help her on the outside. Her case worker found her housing, which she credits as the key to her success. She was able to continue showing up to her court dates, a challenge without public transportation, and ultimately had her record cleared and legal competence restored.

Siskiyou County now has what they call a behavioral health court. It wipes the criminal charges off the records of participants who complete mental health treatment, and keeps them in the community while they do it.

Siskiyou County’s approach to a mental health court can potentially be a model for other counties in California, rural or urban. Studies have proven that mental health courts are effective. Specifically, “participants are significantly more likely to utilize treatment services, less likely to be rearrested, and spent fewer days in jail as opposed to nonparticipants.”

People with mental health disabilities are overrepresented in jail and prison. In a moment where much of our national conversation is centering on how to move away from our carceral system and integrate a nuanced understanding of mental health, it seems appropriate to include in our community court systems. Perhaps Siskiyou County can be one model for keeping people in their rural communities while also finding a way to get them the mental health supports they need.