Sick and Mired
For mentally ill, any jail is hard time
"The security issue should not be the major issue for these people — the major issue is their treatment. And so the culture of security shouldn’t dominate the treatment setting. I can’t let them go free, but I don’t have to have them locked up in a manner that doesn’t facilitate their mental-health treatment."
His plan, Baca says, is simple: "I want to outpatient these people to either a hospital or a clinic provider, where their medical records while they’re in our care are linked up with these outsider providers. I’ve asked the command people to start to put the framework on these ideas. I want a real tangible turnaround. Within the next three months, as we enter the budget cycle, I want to share our plan with the Board of Supervisors and the Department of Mental Health and let them buy into the process, so I’m not the shot caller and they join with me in the solution." Given the depth of his personal commitment, how well Lee Baca lives up to these comments will be the clearest signpost to what we can expect from his tenure.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s monitoring continues. Its investigators will be making their next inspection in April.
As for Jay Holton, at the end of the hearing Judge Romero eliminates one of Holton’s strikes — he’d earlier found another to be invalid — and he sends him off to state prison for a 90-day evaluation. In March, Holton will return to court to learn his fate. "The easy thing," says Brent Montgomery, "would be to simply send him to prison. That’s the D.A.’s position: ‘So what if he goes to prison? If he won’t stay out of people’s houses, he needs to go to prison.’ But everybody has a brother, son or father. If Jay were yours, would you say, ‘Fuck him, lock him up for good, I don’t care what happens, just keep him off the streets?’"
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