2 pledge relief for addicts, patients

Lawmaker calls fixes No. 1 goal

FAYETTEVILLE -- Treatment for drug addiction and mental-health issues will form a major part of Gov. Asa Hutchinson's prison and probation overhaul package, state lawmakers assured a crowd Saturday in Fayetteville.

An overhaul of the prison and probation system is the biggest issue left before the current legislative session, with health care issues and a tax-cut plan resolved, the lawmakers said.

"This is going to be the No. 1 topic from now to April," when the session is scheduled to end, said Sen. Jon Woods, R-Springdale.

The crowd assembled to hear an update on Senate Bill 148 by Woods and Rep. David Whitaker, D-Fayetteville.

That bill would devote more money from court fees to drug courts and would set up a mental health crisis-intervention system. The bill also would require money for drug courts to be distributed based on caseloads instead of giving equal shares to courts.

Drug courts provide supervised probation in nonviolent criminal cases in which drug addiction is believed to be the leading cause of the criminal behavior.

Mental health is a separate issue where many of those afflicted, like those who are addicted to drugs, also wind up committing crimes, lawmakers said Saturday. The mentally ill then end up in the state's overcrowded prison and county jail systems, they said.

SB148 would provide court fees to support intervention for the mentally ill similar to what drug courts provide for drug addiction.

Woods announced Saturday that he had withdrawn the bill at the governor's request because its provisions are being integrated into the governor's proposals, which will be announced soon.

"Nothing like this ever happened to me before," said Woods, who served in the House before his election to the Senate. "I was contacted by the governor two days ago and told this bill was being copied and pasted into the prisons and parole omnibus bill."

Woods and other lawmakers said the provisions of SB148 were a joint effort of much of the Northwest Arkansas delegation; Washington County's Drug Court Judge Christi Beaumont and Sheriff Tim Helder; mental-health experts in the region, including some from the University of Arkansas; and others.

The nonprofit groups Mental Health America, Judicial Equity for Mental Illness, the League of Women Voters and the Citizens First Congress organized Saturday's meeting at First United Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville.

Woods credited his predecessor, former state Sen. Bill Pritchard, R-Elkins, for his efforts to find money for drug courts. Woods is "carrying the torch" Pritchard first took up, he told the group.

With tax cuts and health care policy decided, this is the biggest remaining issue before the Legislature in the session, said Woods and other attending lawmakers: Sen. Uvalde Lindsey and Reps. Whitaker and Greg Leding, all Democrats from Fayetteville.

Whitaker is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which will take up the governor's omnibus bill.

The Department of Correction proposed $100 million in new prison construction to house the backup of state prisoners in county jails. Hutchinson and lawmakers rejected that proposal while the governor works on an alternative.

"Diversion from incarceration, diversion from the criminal justice system, is the best solution to prison overcrowding," Lindsey said at the meeting.

Lawmakers have known alternatives such as drug courts have been the best option for years, he said, "but we'd always get to that point in a session and run out of money" as more traditional priorities were financed first, Lindsey said.

Nancy Young of the Logan community, southeast of Fort Smith, told the group she has a family member living in Pulaski County because there's no "assisted outpatient treatment" any closer to home for mental illness.

Young's family is worried that living so far from family and community, her relative will not receive needed supervision until and unless he commits a crime.

"We tried to get him in a residential program but were told they wouldn't take him because he was verbally combative and they didn't have to take him because there wasn't a court order," Young said. "Well, there won't be a court order unless he gets in trouble and it's too late."

"You don't tell a cancer patient, 'Well, your cancer's not serious yet. Go away and come back when you're at stage four,'" Young said.

Northwest Arkansas will make a case to become the site of the first mental health crisis-intervention center, Lindsey and Woods said Saturday.

"The law enforcement community is totally supportive in Northwest Arkansas," Lindsey said, adding that the region has taken the lead on getting this kind of service and that the governor knows that.

Metro on 02/15/2015

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