State fund created to speed up mental health screening for criminal defendants

South Dakota officials are creating a fund to speed up mental health screening for criminal defendants.

The Department of Social Services is working on a contract with the Association of County Commissioners to take money previously given to the Human Services Center for court-ordered forensic evaluation and distribute it to counties, said Tia Kafka, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services.

The move is part of the state’s effort to find solutions to a growing mental health epidemic and improve how mentally ill criminal defendants interact with the criminal justice system.

"This will provide more flexibility to counties in regards to the completion of competency evaluations," Kafka said.

More:Psychologists helping to clear court exam bottleneck

A 2014 Argus Leader Media investigation found South Dakota courts routinely jail mentally ill defendants for six months or more without trial because of a backlog of court-ordered mental health exams. The problem is aggravated by a cap on the number of evaluations the state's mental health hospital is willing to perform.

State resources for mental competency evaluations can't keep up with a growing demand – the number of evaluations ordered last year was more than four times the state was willing to conduct. The Human Services Center, which is based in Yankton and overseen by the Department of Social Services, had an unwritten rule that it would only perform three evaluations a month for the entire state.

Now, that money will be available to counties when needed.

The South Dakota Association of County Commissioners will oversee funding. Executive Director Bob Wilcox said counties will submit an application to his office detailing the cost for a competency screening.

“This is going to be a really positive shot in the arm to help with these costs and a very welcomed relief,” Wilcox said.

More:Mental health court money left out of state budget

Minnehaha County Commissioner Cindy Heiberger has been appointed to a state watchdog committee to oversee the implementation of criminal justice reforms, including how the system handles people with mental illnesses.

Heiberger said she supported the fund. Minnehaha County has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for competency evaluations for criminal defendants. The process became clogged after the state court system saw 147 requests for mental competency exams, but the state’s mental health hospital would only do 36 a year. 

The county saw criminal defendants waiting anywhere from six months to a year for the evaluation.

“Our hope is that there will be more timely evaluations and there won’t be as a much transporting to the (Human Services Center) for evaluations,” Heiberger said.

Wendy Giebink, executive director of the South Dakota Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said the state’s counties have limited funding for competency evaluations, so having a fund establish could speed up the wait times for some criminal defendants.

“If that decreases the amount of time they are waiting in jail and not receiving mental health treatment in their communities, it will be helpful,” Giebink said. “We know that being incarcerated can make people with mental illness sicker, and jail is not the appropriate place for them to get medical treatment.”

More:Interim administrator named to state's mental health hospital

Contact criminal justice watchdog reporter Mark Walker at 605-331-2333, mwalker@argusleader.com or @ArgusMWalker.