Mississippi lawmakers are patting themselves on the back for a variety of accomplishments this legislative season including raising teacher pay up to national levels, implementing medical marijuana, reducing the state income tax and funding local infrastructure, among others. Certainly the influx of federal covid disaster funds has helped matters.
But there are still two big tasks ahead that the state must deal with. First, our prisons are a mess. Guard pay is too low to recruit good staff, leading to high levels of gang-related bribery and prison contraband. Rehabilitation programs are minimal and must be vastly expanded. According to Mississippi Speaker Phillip Gunn, Alabama, which is under federal decree, is being forced to spend $2 billion on prison reform. That’s an amount Mississippi could not afford. Thanks to a conservative federal judge, Mississippi is not currently under federal decree. Our state has a narrow window of opportunity to get its prison act together and avoid a hugely expensive federal takeover.
Another major problem in our state is mental health. Mississippi has dragged its feet in converting from big centralized mental health facilities to smaller-scale, localized community-based treatment programs. As a result, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health (DMH) is under federal court decree, presided over by Jackson federal district judge Carlton Reeves. The independent monitor, Dr. Michael Hogan, presented one of his first reports earlier this month. “Substantial progress” is being made, Hogan reported, but we still have a long way to go.
For instance, far too many civil commitments are waiting in jail cells because there is no bed in a mental health facility. Hogan stated: “A particularly troubling aspect of this was that people who are waiting for a state hospital bed in some instances had to wait in jail until a bed became available. A number of state hospital beds are taken up by people who have been committed to that hospital but do not have a serious mental illness. They might have conditions like dementia or a developmental disability or substance abuse problem without having a serious mental illness, and these are people who need care but for whom the state hospital is not the right place.” Hogan stressed the need for better documentation throughout the tracking process of mental health patients.
A big part of the mental health problem is the fragmented nature of the process. Some patients have private insurance; others use Medicaid; state hospitals are funded by the legislature. The federal nature of our local, state and national services make centralized tracking, treatment and funding challenging at best. What’s ultimately needed is for local, state and federal mental health agencies to combine forces into one uniform program from start to finish. The current system is so fragmented that professionals have trouble navigating its complexity, much more so the mentally challenged people who are in dire need. There is much work to be done.
