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Harris County candidate forum focused on mental health and criminal justice

A reader points out this Houston Chronicle story describing "a forum on behavioral health and the criminal justice system" in which "Republican and Democratic candidates for county judge, sheriff and district attorney offered ideas meant to divert the mentally ill from jail to treatment."Read the whole article for the various candidates' views. For my part, I'm amazed and pleased that there was even a forum on this topic, much less that so many candidates attended. That says a lot, I think, about the zeitgeist of the times, and also the budgetary impact of treating mental illness through the justice system: "Harris County spends an estimated $87 million a year to incarcerate and treat mentally ill inmates," reported the Chronicle.Nearly every community in Texas faces similar local debates...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on August 27, 2008 (boomark / email).