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Mississippi lawmakers have overhauled the state's civil commitment laws after Mississippi Today and ProPublica reported that hundreds of people in the state are jailed without criminal charges every year as they wait for court-ordered mental health treatment.

Right now, anyone going through the civil commitment process can be jailed if county officials decide they have no other place to hold them. House Bill 1640, which Gov. Tate Reeves  signed Wednesday, would limit the practice. It says people can be jailed as they go through the civil commitment process only if they are “actively violent” and for a maximum of 48 hours. It requires the mental health professional who recommends commitment to document why less-restrictive treatment is not an option. And before paperwork can be filed to initiate the commitment process, a staffer with a local community mental health center must assess the person's condition. 

Supporters described the law, which goes into effect July 1, as a step forward in limiting jail detentions. Those praising it included county officials who handle commitments, associations representing sheriffs and county supervisors, and the state Department of Mental Health.

“This new process puts the person first,” said Adam Moore, a spokesperson for the Department of Mental Health, which provides training, along with some funding and services related to the commitment process. “It connects someone in need of mental health services with a mental health professional as the first step in the process, before the chancery court or law enforcement becomes involved.”

But some officials involved in the commitment process said that unless the state expands the number of treatment beds, the effect of the legislation will be limited. “Just because you've got a diversion program doesn't mean you have anywhere to divert them to,” said Jamie Aultman, who handles commitments as chancery clerk in Lamar County, just west of Hattiesburg.

Although every state allows people to be involuntarily committed, most don't jail people during the process unless they face criminal charges, and some prohibit the practice. Even among the few states that do jail people without charges, Mississippi is unique in how regularly it does so and for how long. Under Mississippi law, people going through the commitment process can be jailed if there is “no reasonable alternative.” State psychiatric hospitals usually have a waiting list, and short-term crisis units are often full or turn people away. Officials in many counties see jail as the only place to hold people as they await publicly funded treatment.

Idaho lawmakers recently dealt with a similar issue. There, some people deemed “dangerously mentally ill” have been imprisoned for months at a time; this spring, lawmakers funded the construction of a facility to house them. 

Nearly every county in Mississippi reported jailing someone going through the commitment process at least once in the year ending in June 2023, according to the state Department of Mental Health. In just 19 of the state's 82 counties, people awaiting treatment were jailed without criminal charges at least 2,000 times from 2019 to 2022, according to a review of jail dockets by Mississippi Today and ProPublica. (Those figures, which included counties that provided jail dockets identifying civil commitment bookings, include detentions for both mental illness and substance abuse; the legislation addresses only the commitment process for mental illness.)

Sheriffs have decried the practice, saying jails aren't equipped to handle people with severe mental illness. Since 2006, at least 17 people have died after being held in jail during the civil commitment process; nine were suicides.

The bill's sponsors said Mississippi Today and ProPublica's reporting prompted them to act. “The deficiencies have been outlined and they're being corrected,” said state Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, a co-author of the bill. 

Under current law, anyone can walk into a county office and fill out an affidavit alleging that someone, often a family member, is so seriously mentally ill that they must be forced into treatment. A judge or special master issues an order directing sheriff's deputies to take the person into custody for evaluations, a court hearing and sometimes inpatient treatment. Those screenings take place after the person is in custody — and often while they are in jail. 

The legislation adds several steps to the civil commitment process in order to weed out unnecessary commitments. When someone seeks to file paperwork to commit another person, a county official will direct them to the local community mental health center. There, a mental health professional will try to interview the person alleged to be mentally ill and others who are familiar with their condition. Staff can recommend commitment or other services, including intervention by mental health professionals who will travel to the patient or inpatient treatment at a crisis stabilization unit. 

As a chancery clerk in northeastern Mississippi's Lee County, Bill Benson has long dealt with people seeking to file commitment affidavits.

He said first requiring a screening by a mental health professional is a good move. “I'm an accountant. I'm not going to try and make a determination” about whether someone needs to be committed, he said. He generally allows people to file commitment papers so he can “let the judge make that call.”             

The bill says that if the community mental health center recommends commitment after the initial screening, someone can't be jailed while awaiting treatment unless all other options have been exhausted and a judge specifically orders the person to be jailed. The legislation also says people can be held in jail for only 24 hours unless the community mental health center requests an additional 24-hour hold and a judge agrees. Roughly two-thirds of the people jailed over four years were held longer than 48 hours, according to Mississippi Today and ProPublica's analysis. 

However, the bill does not address the underlying reason that many people are jailed as they await a treatment bed. “I'm not certain there are enough beds and personnel available to take everybody,” Benson said. “I think everyone will attempt to comply, but there are going to be some instances where somebody's going to have to be housed in the jail.”

Nor does the legislation say anything about how the provisions will be enforced. House Public Health Chair Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, the primary sponsor of the bill, said the Department of Mental Health will “police this.” He also said he hopes the law's new reporting requirements for community mental health centers will encourage county supervisors to monitor compliance. 

Moore, at the Department of Mental Health, said the agency won't enforce the law, although it will educate county officials, who are responsible for housing people going through civil commitment until they are transferred to a state hospital. “We sincerely hope all stakeholders will abide by the new processes and restrictions,” Moore said. “But DMH does not have oversight over county courts or law enforcement.”

Several mental health experts and advocates for people with mental illness say the law doesn't go far enough to ban a practice that many contend is unconstitutional. For that reason, representatives of Disability Rights Mississippi have said they're planning to sue the state and several counties.

“The basic flaw remains,” said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and former president of the American Psychiatric Association. “There is no justification for putting someone who needs hospital-level care in jail, not even for 24 hours.”

Agnel Philip of ProPublica and Isabelle Taft, formerly of Mississippi Today, contributed reporting.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

MAY 12, 1967

Benjamin Brown, a former civil rights organizer, was shot in the back on this day in Jackson, Mississippi. 

Brown had walked with a friend into the Kon-Tiki Café to pick up a sandwich to take home to his wife. On his way back, he encountered a standoff between law enforcement officers and Jackson State University students, who had been hurling rocks and bottles at them. Brown was hit in the back by three shotgun blasts. No arrests were ever made, and the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission gathered spy files on the students who protested. 

Eyewitnesses pointed their fingers at then-Mississippi Highway Patrolman Lloyd Jones, who reportedly admitted his involvement in the killing. When some accused a Jackson police detective of killing Brown, Jones was quoted as replying that the detective “didn't shoot that n—–, I did.” 

Jones was quoted as saying that he took the shotgun home, cleaned it, wrapped it in a blanket and placed it in an attic for a few months before returning it to service. Jones was never charged and in 1995 was killed while working as sheriff in Simpson County.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

House and Senate members often adjourn a legislative day in memory of a constituent or other well known person who recently died.

On the day the Mississippi House took its final vote to adopt a new school funding formula, Rep. Karl Oliver, R-Winona, asked “to adjourn in memory of the Mississippi Adequate Education plan…the failed plan.”

Oliver continued: “It has always failed and never met its expectations. Today we laid it to rest.”

House Speaker Jason White, R-West, gleefully responded that all House members might want to sign onto Oliver's adjourn in memory motion.

Of course, the Senate went on to pass the bill rewriting the Adequate Education Program and Gov. Tate Reeves, a long-time opponent of MAEP, signed the legislation into law this week, no doubt stirring much celebration for folks like Oliver and White.

But for those celebrating the demise of MAEP, be warned with a paraphrased song lyric: Meet the new school funding formula, same as the old school funding formula.

The core principle of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program lives in the new funding formula, named simply the Mississippi Student Funding Formula.

Like MAEP, the new formula uses an objective formula to determine the base student cost (amount of funding per student) and provides that amount of money multiplied by school enrollment or attendance to each local school district.

And here's the kicker: Like MAEP, the Mississippi Student Funding Formula mandates that the Legislature appropriate that amount of money annually to each local district.

The new law states plainly, “Base student cost shall not be lower than the previous year.” So that means the new law mandates lawmaker provide enough funds to pay for what will likely be an ever increasing base student cost or, if they don't want to fully fund education, they have to hope enrollment drops or they simply do like they did with MAEP and not follow the law. The new law does provide a small loophole, saying when a revenue shortfall is so severe that state budgets must be cut, education also can be reduced.

But the new law goes on to say, “If the total revenue increases the following year, the formula shall be recalculated or increased.” Just like MAEP, the amount of money called for by the formula is adjusted yearly for inflation. And it is recalculated every fourth year, meaning unless there are unusual circumstances the formula will generate more money for education each year.

For years, many politicians, including the governor, argued that the state could not afford MAEP's objective funding formula. So, while cutting taxes by more than a billion dollars annually, legislators chose to ignore the law saying MAEP “shall” be fully funded. At the same time those tax cuts were being enacted, many legislative leaders, led by then-Lt Gov. Reeves and former Speaker Philip Gunn, were trying to replace MAEP because they said it was too expensive.

During the 2024 session, new Speaker Jason White and House Education Chair Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, pulling significant help from Reps. Kent McCarty and Jansen Owen, said they wanted to rewrite MAEP not because it sent too much money to the public schools, but because it did not send enough money to poorer school districts. And, granted, the new plan has several features that help poor and at-risk students.

But the House plan, which was nearly identical to a funding formula developed by advocacy groups who support sending public funds to private schools, did not include an objective funding formula. Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, said it allowed the Legislature to determine “willy nilly” the amount of money to send to public schools.

DeBar and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann were not among the group of legislators who opposed the objective funding formula. A matter of fact, they said they would not agree to rewrite MAEP unless the new method of sending money to public schools also was arrived at objectively. DeBar and Senate staff essentially developed the new objective formula that was placed into the House's formula rewrite.

In the haste and zeal to replace MAEP, politicians who did not like the objective formula agreed to adopt, gulp, a new objective funding formula — one that provides a little less money than MAEP, but still a significant amount and still with a mandate for the Legislature to provide that amount of funds each year.

In a lawsuit challenging the Legislature for not fully funding MAEP, the state Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that “shall” did not actually mean shall. In other words, the justices ruled that legislators did not have to fully fund MAEP even though the law said they “shall” do so.

When and if the new Mississippi Student Funding Formula is not fully funded, maybe the Supreme Court will get another chance to rule on whether legislators have to follow the laws they pass.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.