Sheriff says mental health bill necessary

Friday, June 27, 1997 | 11:17 a.m.

"Everybody loses when we put a mentally ill person in the justice system," Washoe County Sheriff Dick Kirkland told the Ways and Means Committee during a hearing Thursday on Senate Bill 319, appropriating $5.5 million for a comprehensive mental health package.

About 150 of his jail's 900 inmates are mentally ill and need to be treated with medication, Kirkland said.

"We have to take those men and women off the street and we end up holding them, but they shouldn't be in the jail. They should be in a facility where they can get care," he said.

The measure was the result of public and private meetings to assess the condition of mental health services in the state and devise plans to fix them, Kirkland said.

SB319 funds programs for community treatment, a crisis unit for emergency psychiatric care, psycho-social rehabilitation, senior citizen outreach, a computer network program and several smaller plans.

archive