Diversion deliberation

Rachelle Witherell has come a long way since last May. At the time, she was using methamphetamine and not taking her medication for bipolar disorder with schizoaffective tendencies, she told the CN&R. She stole a car, got arrested and lost custody of her daughter.

Witherell started using drugs when she was 18 years old. Now 37, she is four months clean, taking her medications and living in a sober living environment in west Chico. She has multiple weekly visitations with her daughter. And she is one of the first people in Butte County to be approved for mental health diversion services, which allow qualified defendants to enter a supervised treatment program as an alternative to prison time.

Witherell described the moment when her application was reviewed and granted during a recent appearance in court: “The judge had a smile on her face the whole time and she said she was really proud of me.

“Not a lot of people have said that to me in my life. For a judge to say that is extremely huge.”

Last year, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 215, which calls for mental health diversion services. However, counties have discretion and flexibility when it comes to development and implementation. Locally, efforts to get the ball rolling have been slow, according to local attorneys and mental health advocates who have been clamoring for an expansion of the program.

During a Butte County Bar Association meeting earlier this week, Butte County Superior Court Judge Clare Keithley confirmed court officials have been discussing a partnership with Butte County Behavioral Health to create a mental health therapeutic courtroom to be “more efficient and effective.”

Mental health diversion is similar to drug diversion, which is offered by the Butte County Probation Department’s Treatment Court (formerly known as drug court) through a collaboration with Behavioral Health. Where the former differs, however, is that offenders can have their criminal charges dismissed and arrests expunged; in drug court, convictions can be reduced. As District Attorney Mike Ramsey put it at the meeting, “It’s as if the crime never happened.” A link must be demonstrated between the crime and mental health diagnosis, and those who have committed homicide, rape and sexual offenses are ineligible, according to the law.

There is no state mandate for a specialized court, according to Chico attorney Philip Heithecker, director of the local public defender consortium. However, they tend to be more successful when it comes to tracking and reviewing individual cases.

Since the law went into effect, Butte County Superior Court has received approximately 20-30 mental health diversion applications. Those that have been granted are being tracked independently, he said, without a review team or assigned prosecutor or defense attorney.

Behavioral Health had a similar program in place from 2001 to 2004, funded by the state Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction Grant Program. Those enrolled received case management and medication-assisted treatment. Don Taylor, assistant director of clinical services at Behavioral Health, said they showed a roughly 20 percent increase in functioning and in life satisfaction, and a lower percentage of subsequent jail bookings.

For Witherell, pursuing diversion services was far from easy. She first applied to drug court and was denied. Then she reconnected with Lisa Currier, founder of Crisis Care Advocacy and Triage, whom she’d met while staying at Safe Space Winter Shelter in 2014. Currier told her about mental health diversion and encouraged her to pursue it.

Witherell then started a months-long process of getting reference letters and working with multiple providers from Behavioral Health to get a treatment plan solidified to present to the judge.

She’s hopeful a separate therapeutic court will be established soon to help more people with mental illness.

“I think it’s a huge opportunity for people,” she said. “Deep down, I wanted to change my life. I was done. I knew I deserved better.”

Currier said there are hundreds of people who will have a harder time getting through the application process, because they aren’t as stable and have no assistance.

Take, for instance, some of attorney Saul Henson’s clients. Providing the treatment resources the court requires for mental health diversion cases to be granted is important for it to be successful: When his clients are experiencing a mental health crisis, he calls Currier, because she is the only person who will answer the phone and check in on them at 3 a.m., he said at the association’s meeting.

“I have 50 people who need help yesterday,” he said. “And I think that we have an absolute moral, legal and professional and ethical obligation to our community to move this model faster than we have been.”

Keithley said buy-in from Behavioral Health is necessary to avoid a diversion system that only serves people with private insurance.

Behavioral Health is looking at realigning existing resources to make this program work, Taylor told the CN&R. Such a program could easily cost millions of dollars to implement, yet it is “not unusual for legislation to be passed that does not have funding that comes with it.”

While proposed Senate Bill 389 wouldn’t provide more funding, it would allow counties to use Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) grants for diversion programs. These grants are based on personal income taxes—for the 2019-20 fiscal year, Butte County anticipates receiving about $12 million, according to Holli Drobny, county MHSA coordinator.

In attorney Ron Reed’s view, the community is in a “state of desperation” and that law could “make a world of difference,” he shared at the association’s meeting.

“I think we need … something where the county actually comes forward, takes the money, raises the funds and follows through,” he said. “We’re not really winning the battle. What we’re doing is not enough.”