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The City of San Antonio is moving ahead with a plan to do a deeper dive into the possibility of creating a program that would send people with mental illness and substance use disorders to treatment instead of jail.
"We are proposing this be an alternative to jail," said Jelynne LeBlanc Jamison, the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Center for Health Care Services (CHCS), at a Wednesday meeting of the San Antonio City Council to discuss the idea. "We want this to be a therapeutic drop-off site for adults who encounter law enforcement."
The city has agreed to do a feasibility study on a program that would focus on redirecting the 80 to 100 people who are booked into jail on misdemeanors every day, who have mental health concerns, intellectual and developmental disabilities, or substance use disorders. "They are booked for low-level offenses," Jamison said, "And they are basically kept in jail."
"We want to perform a person-centered and trauma-informed approach to care," she continued. "We want to focus on stabilizing those individuals, provide treatment to them, and focus on the prevention of relapse and recovery."
This would save taxpayers money, according to Jamison. The current daily cost to jail someone in Bexar County who might be better served in a diversion and recovery center is $1,750. At the diversion center in Harris County, the daily cost to house and treat someone, according to a report shared at Wednesday's meeting by Deputy City Manager María Villagómez, is just over $500 a day.
"So if you use the Harris County experience against what we are spending in Bexar County," Jamison said, "There's an opportunity for savings and cost avoidance for this community."
Those who avoid jail in Harris County's diversion program also have better outcomes, according to Villagómez's report. People with five or more bookings who were then diverted were 3.1 times less likely to be booked into jail on a new offense.
"Jail booking reductions were largest amongst Black participants, male participants, and homeless participants," Villagómez said. "Psychiatric emergency incident reductions were largest amongst people who were homeless at the time of participation."
Jamison pointed out that homelessness is common among those who might benefit from a diversion program in Bexar County, too. "I'd be willing to bet those individuals that I talked about, the 80 to 100 that are booked daily with mental health and substance use, and are (in jail) for criminal trespassing, are also unsheltered," she said.
The City of San Antonio will contribute $30,000 from the police budget to do the feasibility study. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus supports the plan. "I think SAPD has done pretty much everything we can do from a mental health perspective," he said at Wednesday's council meeting. "Something like this is probably long overdue."
District 5 City Councilmember Teri Castillo is a key driver behind this push to create a diversion and recovery program in Bexar County. She filed a request late last year for the city to create a committee to investigate the possibility, and at Wednesday's meeting, she was optimistic about its potential.
"When we take systemic approaches to systemic issues like the jail diversion that your team has been exploring," Castillo said, "There's opportunity for us to really shift the paradigm of how we not only improve the quality of life for individuals, but for communities as a whole."
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