The latest conversation may have begun because of overcrowding in state prisons and county jails, but it should take root for other reasons.
People who suffer from mental illness often need treatment, not jail. But jail is where too many of them end up.
So, a coalition of groups wants the state to put money into a diversion program for people with mental-health and substance-abuse issues.
It's the kind of investment the state ought to make.
Sebastian County Sheriff Bill Hollenbeck spoke to the matter recently.
"If we can get them the health care they need, and not enter them into the criminal justice system, they can get jobs and be productive members of society, rather than a burden to the system," he said. "It's just smart justice and being conservatively smart with tax dollars in diverting people who don't need to be in jail. I need room in our jail for bad guys, for violent offenders."
Hollenbeck could have been speaking for all the county sheriffs and others in law enforcement as well.
Many an officer has had to jail people they know need mental health care instead. The practice does needlessly crowd the jails and prisons while denying mentally ill people what they really need.
Arkansas has long had too few beds in treatment facilities, which means there are times when a person undergoing a episode of some sort can't get immediate access to care.
Some present a threat to themselves or to others and some act out, committing offenses that demand an immediate response by law enforcement.
That's what gets them jailed, maybe on a low-level offense, but the situation can escalate, as Crawford County Sheriff Ron Brown described.
"Now you've got someone who's ill, they've got no criminal history, they're scared and defenseless, and maybe they get combative with a deputy because they're scared, and now they're facing a felony offense because they assaulted a police officer," said Brown.
These people may wait in jail for a treatment bed to open up, getting into more and more trouble, said another sheriff.
Still another sheriff cited a study that showed about 40 percent of prisoners in the county's jail had been under some type of care for mental illness at some point. The study is seven years old but he's sure, if anything, the percentage has increased.
So, more power to this as-yet-unnamed coalition that wants Arkansas to try something else.
Among the groups involved are the Arkansas Sheriffs' Association, the Mental Health Council of Arkansas and the Association of Arkansas Counties.
Various members of the group have been traveling to other states where diversion programs are in place and looking at ways to implement something similar in Arkansas.
According to Hollenbeck, 45 states have diversion programs.
A possible model for Arkansas would involve creating three centers in different regions of the state, providing a place where people could get urgent care or maybe stay for up to a week.
Whatever the cost, coalition members suggest, should be less than what could be saved by not jailing and processing people with mental illness through the criminal justice system.
The coalition plans to make the pitch next year, when the Legislature meets in a fiscal session.
State Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Benton and co-chairman of the Legislative Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force, agrees diversion is a direction the state needs to be heading.
But, while the idea tops his list of options, Hutchinson also acknowledged competing ideas for the state's money.
Among those, of course, is the idea that Arkansas needs to build a new prison, expanding its capacity to hold more offenders and relieving pressure on the county jails.
Not too long ago, there was a move afoot to build a 1,000-bed prison, estimated to cost $100 million, but Gov. Asa Hutchinson led the state down alternative paths intended to reduce overcrowding.
Surely, the state can stay on that path, avoid building another prison and explore ideas like this one to divert more offenders who are mentally ill to treatment instead of incarceration.
Commentary on 10/18/2015