13 April 2023
TOPEKA (KSNT) – Mental health is a growing concern both in our community and in our jails. Now, Shawnee County is working to become a model for treatment and rehabilitation.
With a growing number of people living with mental illness in our community and our jails, it is becoming increasingly difficult to properly house many people. On average 35 percent of inmates in Shawnee County are considered severely mentally ill. Jail officials say it’s partially due to an increase in mental health conditions in the community, new and more severe illicit drugs on the market and a higher population in general.
Now, the county is looking into building a new mental health unit within the Shawnee County Detention Center. In 2022, the county put aside $10,000,000 for this project with a goal of making inmates not feel like they’re incarcerated.
“It’s really going to start having to look like a hybrid between a hospital and a jail,” Shawnee County Department of Corrections Deputy Director Timothy Phelps said. “So, that we have colors and materials that are in their living units that don’t remind them and let them constantly realize they’re inside a jail if we want to reduce the impact on their mental health.”
While a new facility will help treat inmates, it won’t totally fix the problem. That’s why according to Phelps, building up manpower to mental health is just as important. He says if an inmate with severe mental conditions is released back into the community, there’s no guarantee they will be connected to outside services and then they find themselves back in jail.
“Both the unit that we’re working on building and our program is designed to as seemingly as possible let a person who suffers from severe mental illness to transition back out into services in the community,” Phelps said.
With just a handful of institutions in the whole country taking detention centers and moving them towards integrated mental health facilities, Phelps says that Shawnee County is trying to make itself a model of how to do it right.
The project itself would take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to complete. The hope is to have a vendor for the project by June.