The Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services Commission filed a lawsuit in May against state officials over the lag in psychiatric services, claiming the delays violate defendants' due process rights. Similar delays have sparked litigation in many other states. More than 900 are waiting for just the first step in the process, a "forensic evaluation." In Georgia, 368 people who have been deemed incompetent sit in local jails waiting to get treatment to stand trial, according to the state. The legal standard is that an individual charged with a crime must be able to participate in their defense.
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People in jail with serious mental illness - and who cannot stand trial because of their condition - are waiting months, or even more than a year, to start receiving the care needed to "restore" their competency to stand trial. Such long delays for state psychiatric hospital services are playing out in jails across the United States. The Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, which runs those psychiatric hospitals, didn't comply, and the judge held the agency commissioner in contempt of court a month later. The treatment delay frustrated a Walton County judge, who said Hampton's condition worsened in the crowded jail and in March ordered him to be transferred within 24 hours to a state hospital.
Then Hampton had to wait to get a placement in a state psychiatric hospital so he could receive treatment to meet the legal threshold for competency. In February, a state psychologist found Hampton incompetent. The 18-year-old Hampton, who has a long history of mental illness, sat in jail east of Atlanta for four months waiting for an expert to evaluate whether he was mentally fit to stand trial. Jun 10 2022īeau Hampton’s long wait for psychiatric treatment began last year, after he was accused of attacking his foster father and charged with a misdemeanor.
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