Dallas County has entered into a new agreement with the North Texas Behavioral Health Authority (NTBHA) to add psychiatric hospital beds for inmates.
The Dallas County Commissioners Court approved this new agreement with the NTBHA during its last meeting on December 20.
If inmates in Texas are deemed unfit to stand trial by clinical experts, efforts are made to restore competency before a trial.
Dallas County reported that 366 inmates were waiting for state psychiatric beds in late November, according to The Dallas Morning News. Of said inmates, 233 were determined to not need maximum-security supervision and 133 inmates were reported to be in need of maximum-security detainment.
The recent agreement will provide one year of funding for NTBHA to contract with behavioral health providers and reserve a hospital unit of 16 beds at a rate of $800 per day, including NTBHA administrative oversight and outcome monitoring.
This will facilitate approximately 113 individuals receiving treatment to regain competency.
Dallas County will spend just over $4.3 million fulfilling this agreement. These funds will be sourced from the $511 million the state received in taxpayer-funded federal relief in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I feel very optimistic about this,” said Commissioner Elba Garcia during the meeting. “It’s doing something different — thinking out of the box, thinking how we can get more partners to do the right thing and help us to reduce the jail population.”
During the meeting, Commissioner John Wiley Price asked who in the county’s operations would be responsible for ensuring that individuals who had their competency restored would be handed off correctly, noting that a provision on the matter was missing.
“I’m trying to pin it down. Who is going to be responsible for making sure that that individual once he is handed back off from NTBHA gets to court?” asked Price. “That’s the key.”
Assistant County Administrator Charles Reed told the court that the contract includes a coordinator position intended to close any gaps.
“Built into this contract with NTBHA is an administrative piece that gives them some leeway to hire a coordinator to help us on that front,” said Reed.
“And so there should not be any gap between the Criminal Justice Department and our courts being notified when they come back,” he continued.
