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County gets $250K for mentally ill defense
By Dan Eakin, deakin@starlocalnews.com
Collin County officials received word last week that the county will get more than $250,000 for a new managed assigned-counsel program to provide defense services to mentally ill defendants.
Collin County Commissioners in April approved applying for the funds from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission (TIDC), upon the request of the sheriff and several county judges and officers. At that time, there were 16 seriously mentally ill inmates and 39 other inmates with some form of mental illness in the Collin County Detention Center.
District Judge John Roach Jr. of the 296th District Court said the average length of stay for seriously mentally ill inmates in Collin County is 430 percent longer than general-population inmates, or 213 days vs. 49 days.
"We are looking forward to collaborating with the various departments on the persistent problems and issues that defendants with mental illness pose," Roach said. "Our job in the courts is to ensure effective counsel and processes with just result."
He noted that inmates with longer stays in the county jail prove costly to the taxpayers. He said that over the past two and a half years, inmates found incompetent and either transported or waiting to be transported to Terrell for competency restoration have cost Collin County taxpayers close to $2 million.
About 60 counties have been awarded a total of $2 million to help offset increased indigent defense costs. Nine county programs were awarded discretionary funding to establish new indigent defense offices or procedures, along with continued funding for 11 other county programs.
The TIDC, formerly the Task Force on Indigent Defense, since 2002 has distributed funds to help counties meet statutory and constitutional requirements to provide access to counsel for the poor.
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