Mike Brooks
Audio By Carbonatix
On any given night, the Dallas County Jail holds thousands of people arrested for all levels of crime. Some of those individuals could use mental health or substance abuse services, and those needs are assessed during time-consuming evaluations on intake. Oftentimes, though, treatment through the jail system isn’t as robust as a person in crisis may need.
In Miami-Dade County, officials have shown that a new approach to detainment may be possible.
According to a Dallas city memo, a task force charged with finding solutions to reduce the number of people held at the Dallas County Jail on any given day is exploring the Miami-Dade model of directing low-level offenders to treatment facilities rather than jails. As of now, Dallas County operates one deflection center, which serves as an alternative to incarceration for people accused of non-violent, low-level misdemeanors such as trespassing or loitering.
While that center can bypass jail intake and connect individuals “to treatment through partner agencies,” it is currently “not equipped to address substance use disorders,” the memo states. Identifying how that sort of treatment could be better integrated into the deflection center’s services is a priority for the task force, which has begun pitching the idea of expanding the model across Dallas to city and county officials.
According to the memo, Dallas County is reviewing costs associated with expanding the deflection program across town. Austin Street Center, a homeless shelter located in South Dallas, is named in the memo as one of the potential partners for the initiative.
Providing an alternative to incarceration is something the center has already achieved after launching a transition center in partnership with Dallas Area Rapid Transit last fall. According to Valerie Palmer, director of housing and coordination, the eight-bed program differs slightly from diversion center programs, but serves a similar goal.
Transition centers serve individuals experiencing homelessness who have encountered law enforcement, likely because of a mental health crisis or trespassing call, but have not necessarily committed a crime.
“It’s about impact. So that could be going to treatment, that could be going into a shelter, that could be reconnecting with family, that could be many different things,” said Palmer. “But the point is that an individual doesn’t end up in jail, and they don’t end up on the street.”
Palmer said the shelter is working with city partners to expand the facility to 16 beds, which would be open to officers from departments outside DART, in addition to transit enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers encounter individuals going through mental health crises frequently, Palmer said, and in many cases, that crisis has led to homelessness.
For those people, “moving towards jail or towards emergency services” has long been considered inevitable, but it’s also costly and doesn’t actually address the root problem. Unlike jail, the transition and deflection centers offer non-violent offenders the opportunity to decompress and get connected with resources such as housing-first shelters, benefits or treatment for illnesses.
According to the Dallas city memo, a city-wide deflection center program is still a ways off, and could face setbacks. Identifying a sustainable funding source and establishing agreements with providers like Austin Street are identified as “key challenges.”
But the impact these types of facilities have is well worth it, Palmer said.
One success story since the program launched last October came after a man was found at a DART train station by officials and brought to the center rather than being run off or charged with trespassing. Originally from Africa, he’d moved to North Texas for a flight attendant job but “fell on hard times” that ultimately led to homelessness and untreated mental illness.
DART was able to find a number for the man’s mother, Palmer said, and officials were surprised to find she’d recently traveled to the U.S. after receiving a call from the Dallas Police Department that her son’s identification had been found.
“She thought he was deceased,” Palmer said. “She was here looking for him, thinking that she was going to be taking his body home. And actually, we were able to connect them that day. She had his passport, and he went home.”
