Recently, a series by Herald Writer Diana Hefley, “What Jail Can’t Cure,” examined the circumstances of the death of Keaton Farris, a young Coupeville man who suffered with mental illness. Arrested for a property crime, Farris passed through four area jails while he waited for a bed at the state psychiatric hospital. While in the Coupeville jail, Farris died of dehydration and malnutrition.

Hefley took her series beyond that tragedy to describe how the criminal justice system has been left to deal with the community’s most vulnerable people. Hefley also looked at innovative programs that seek to provide better treatment than jail alone provides.

Following the series, The Herald sought commentaries from community members and those closely involved in these issues to address the best use of resources to continue these reforms.

Local partners making progress on solutions

By Mary Jane Brell Vujovic

Herald reporter Diana Hefley’s recent series, “What Jail Can’t Cure,” poignantly highlights the complex and intertwining challenges facing Snohomish County residents with mental health and chemical dependency issues coupled with homelessness.

During the past year, Snohomish County and municipal government partners have been joining forces with business, philanthropy, health care and the private non-profit and faith-based communities to develop an in-depth understanding of the issues people are encountering. This includes studying and focusing on services available as well as identifying gaps in services being provided. Additionally, partners have been working to craft innovative solutions to these pressing community concerns.

The efforts to date have been characterized by two attributes fully embedded within Snohomish County’s culture: partnerships and innovation. As issues have been identified in communities throughout the county, partnerships involving diverse representatives have formed to examine them.

As a county, we are now at a tipping point. We must move together from being on the cusp of reform to the other side of long-term results.

Community partners such as Snohomish County and its Sheriff’s Office; the Everett Police Department; Superior Court of Snohomish County; Everett Municipal Court; the county’s Partnership to End Homelessness, Community Services Advisory Committee, and Mental Health/Chemical Dependency Advisory Board; the City of Everett’s Community Streets Initiative; and municipalities throughout Snohomish County have been testing a host of innovative strategies to address the needs identified. Additionally, many evidence-based strategies have been launched to effectively engage people experiencing homelessness coupled with mental health, chemical dependency and other challenges in the services they need to lead stable lives.

Many strategies involving active engagement with individuals living on the streets and in encampments have generated a significant body of knowledge about needs and effective approaches to addressing those needs.

First, these efforts have confirmed that people experiencing homelessness coupled with behavioral health issues are surviving with little or no shelter in communities throughout both incorporated and unincorporated Snohomish County. Second, a significant number of the individuals contacted by law enforcement and human services professionals want to make changes in their lives. While many would move into housing immediately if it were available, law enforcement and human services teams working throughout the county find the lack of housing to be a consistent obstacle to helping those in need. Some of this need has been mitigated through the use of rapid rehousing vouchers in the private housing market. However, there is a growing consensus among diverse leaders that we must create more low-barrier public and private non-profit housing in order to have a balanced and comprehensive system for addressing those needs.

Snohomish County is primed to achieve this long sought-after goal. We have formed critical partnerships and built trust and working relationships. We have conducted research on effective solutions being applied across the nation. We have received assistance from highly respected experts achieving impressive results. And, we have tested and refined solutions that work on a small scale. It is now time to weave these efforts into a unified, countywide system of service that supports and expands the excellent work underway in pockets throughout our county.

While we cannot expect all the issues identified in “What Jail Can’t Cure” to be resolved overnight, we are on the precipice of making a profound and lasting impact that will result in Snohomish County residents leading lives of dignity and contributing to our community to the benefit of us all.

Mary Jane Brell Vujovic is director of the Snohomish County Human Services Department.

Treatment programs can arrest root causes

By Mark Cooke

Too many people with mental illness and addictions end up behind bars. This isn’t good for them, and it hasn’t made the public any safer.

To cut down on the number of mentally ill people in jail, Snohomish County must reduce the number of mentally ill people who get arrested. The county can draw from the successes of cities that are shifting away from criminal justice systems designed primarily for punishment and toward systems that address root causes of crime. Research shows that over the long term, this approach leads to less crime and fewer people in jail.

Under state law, people with mental disorders can often be diverted to services, rather than arrested, at the discretion of the prosecutor and police. Reducing the number of arrests for low-level offenses keeps people with mental illness out of the expensive criminal justice system and allows service providers to tackle the underlying issues contributing to their offenses.

An example of a promising diversion program is LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion), which has been operating in King County and Seattle since 2011. In LEAD, police officers direct low-level offenders engaged in drug or prostitution activity to community-based services, such as mental health or drug treatment, instead of booking them into jail. LEAD aims to reduce the harm an offender causes to him or herself, as well as the harm to the community.

When compared to people booked into jail, LEAD participants are less likely to get arrested again. People in the program were 58 percent less likely than people in the control group to be arrested, according to an April 2015 evaluation by University of Washington researchers. LEAD bypasses the costs and time entailed in booking, charging and requiring court appearances of an individual. It also provides individually tailored services so that the root causes of someone’s criminal activity can be addressed.

Another alternative to arresting people with mental illness is to divert them to crisis triage centers, which provide therapeutic treatment, including counseling and medication. These triage centers provide a vital option for police, who are generally forced to put someone in jail or the emergency room. Several of these centers are operating around the state, and Snohomish County should make it a priority to operate and properly fund this type of service.

Diversion programs like LEAD and crisis triage centers offer proof that communities are safer when people with mental illness and substance abuse issues get treatment, not jail time.

Mark Cooke is policy director for the ACLU of Washington Smart Justice Campaign.

Improved public safety will bring public support

By Andrew Skotdal

Issues related to homelessness and mental health are deeply personal for all members of a community, regardless of the divergence of their opinions.

My perspective is influenced by direct experiences throughout Everett’s north end where I grew up. On a walk to lunch, I approached Colby and Everett avenues where a stranger was standing at the corner. Before I could push the crosswalk button, the stranger wheeled on me, began shouting profanities at me, then at traffic, then at me, while muttering at times in an unintelligible way.

On different day, a 20-something male walked up alongside me with some kind of blue crust surrounding his lips. And after he solicited me for money, he paced me regardless of whether I sped up or slowed down and incoherently insisted that I provide him with paper and pens because he was an artist and needed to draw. I can only conclude he was on drugs. Many north-enders know the intimidating characters on bikes who deal drugs. And when we see clusters of tattered people appearing aggressive, using profanities and making snide comments on the steps of the library, hanging around McDonalds, or in front of QFC after 8 p.m., we can’t help but feel unsafe.

How would anyone know whether they were about to be attacked in these situations? They can’t, and they don’t. And here, the intersection of mental health, homelessness and crime combine, because at the point at which people have concern for their safety, each of these issues looks the same for the majority of people not engaged in this discussion. Homelessness, mental health, crime and drug dealing are sometimes intertwined, sometimes not, and resolutions for each or a combination are vastly different. We’d like to believe citizens could distinguish one type of person from another, but we hear about random violence, and we all understand the need for public safety.

I support low-barrier housing as one alternative to addressing this problem. I’m encouraged 34 psych beds will open soon in Monroe and a certificate of need has been approved for 125 psych beds in Smokey Point, but two more treatment facilities for acute/medical detoxification are also needed now.

Our family is willing to partner with others and also willing to offer free public outreach campaigns to assist in these endeavors, but until businesses can operate without strangers displaying their genitalia to customers and people can go to the grocery store in peace, my first priority is public safety, and for now, increased police presence and more officers is the fastest means to address the problem until other solutions become available.

Andrew Skotdal is president of KRKO Radio (1380 AM) and KKXA Radio (1520 AM), a residential and commercial developer and chairman of the board of Coastal Community Bank.

Efforts must be focused on those most in need

Ring the bell that still can ring!

Forget your perfect offering!

There is a crack, a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

—Leonard Cohen

By The Rev. Bill Kirlin-Hackett

When Everett initiated its 2014 Streets Initiative effort, I heard at least two main goals: First, bring safety to citizens and visitors to Everett; and second, address homelessness.

It’s clear there is indeed overlap between the two goals. Some recommendations are under way or budgeted, such as more officers on the streets and embedded social services staff. A more strident and legally questionable ordinance on panhandling in Everett passed, promising diversion over criminalizing the homeless. We know there are non-homeless criminals on the streets who endanger others. Drugs afflict some who are homeless yet addict many more who have housing as a national heroin epidemic roots in Washington.

So, where are we? We have more to learn about the influence our attitudes have, and how trauma affects our collective well-being. For example, it’s reported that Seattle will send misdemeanor inmates to the Snohomish County jail. At the behest of Everett’s mayor, assurances are in place that, once released, these folks will not wander the Everett streets. So they’ll be returned to Seattle, quite possibly to homelessness there. The indication here is what the Streets Initiative revealed; that is, jail and emergency rooms are revolving doors into homelessness, if not near then farther away, even for those who were not homeless when entering these emergency sites. Because of our attitude and decisions around what we fund, little is in place to halt the result of homelessness when exiting emergency services or jail. The observation? We are less concerned with the well-being of these folks than we are that they will not be our “problem.” The danger? We will more readily assess too many of those homeless on our streets as criminals.

Our public decisions and budgets are guided to first keep those non-homeless safe, followed by keeping some homeless safe. Yet public safety is always about well-being for all, and smart expenditures to help those most in need. Our attitude that still needs growth is how we put those most at risk second. Immediate harm alleviation for them is not at the forefront. If such harm alleviation were first, we’d see, for example, ample winter shelter beds available. Their well-being is yet unclear to us.

I say often, “we create homelessness.” Sure, lack of safety nets contributes, as do poor decisions, abuse of substances, cycles of family homelessness, and more. What we can best provide comes through innovation — acting in more intentional ways — and collaboration — working together better than we have. These, with a recognition of trauma and an attitude adjustment as to whose well-being must come first, are fitting pathways to stability for all.

The Rev. Bill Kirlin-Hackett is director of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness and a co-convener of the Snohomish County Homeless Policy Task Force.