So earlier this week we chatted with Barb Kirkmeyer about the passage of a bill, a House bill last year I believe, yes, last year that changed the competency rules around whether or not someone could be held when found incompetent to stand trial or unable to participate in their defense.
And joining me.
Now to talk about the latest study from the great folks at the Common Sense Institute Colorado is former DA and now Common Sense fellow John Kellner.
John, welcome back to the show.
First of all, Hey Mandy, thanks for having me on.
So tell me a little bit about this report. And first of all, why did you guys dig into this? I mean, obviously it's been a topic, but what was the thing that made common Sense go, you know, we probably need to check this out.
Yeah, great question. So, you know, as district Attorney of the eighteenth Judicial District, I'd begun to see the cracks, of course, in our competency system, and we of course had issues with many defendants who were either actually competent or claiming to be incompetent and going through this incredibly long process. I mean that would often take hundreds of days in order to get a decision on whether or not they could go forward with the case, and so
I was already interested in it. But then you start to see a lot of media attention on some high profile cases, one of them being Solomon Gallaghan. That's the man who was alleged to was going to kidnap acate at a middle school. The DA had to dismiss his case after he was found to be incompetent and not restorable.
And then most recently you've heard it from your Sheriff Reims and the district attorney in will County, this man named Davisa Ephraim who was on charges being held in jail for very violent crimes, including attempted murder, and he was ultimately released and then made headlines again when he was just re arrested. So you know, there's a lot of emphasis, i think, in the media right now, But there's so much more to this story that we wanted to dive into with the Common Sense Institute.
So let's talk about what you found.
Because we've talked about this extensively on the show, and obviously it's a significant issue that does not necessarily have one simple answer. As we learned after talking to Barb Kirkmeyer, just from the way that the law is written.
But what did you guys discover.
Give me the kind of nuts and bolts of the paper for the audience, please.
Yeah, you bet, And I mean, I'm sure Barb mentioned this. This is a longstanding problem, right that has grown I think was exacerbated our law. But really what we have in the state of Colorado is most people don't know that the state's actually under a consent to cree as of twenty nineteen, where they agreed in federal court that look, we must reduce our waight times to get people out of jail into these incompetency restoration in patient beds. They're
supposed to keep it under twenty eight days of wait time. Instead, those folks end up staying in jail for on average, we found one hundred and ten days. That costs our state every single year twelve million dollars in fines that we have to pay because we're not living up to the consent decree. Now, it would be a whole lot more if we didn't actually have a cap on that consent decree. The fines would actually be up to about
sixty five million dollars every year. So if you have the audience an idea of just how out of step the state really is in dealing with the competency issue. Now, what we also found is, on average, it costs the state about three hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars to have one additional bed for somebody who is pending or
going through that incompetency restoration process. So to bring the state in compliance with that twenty nine team consent decree, it would cost the state about sixty million dollars every single year, you know, to just get into the baseline.
And then when you look at some of the latest information about our state where we're falling in at usually the second worst in the country, including Washington DC, when it comes to mental health outcomes and treatment, and you know, issues with diagnoses in our state the second worst in the country, it gives you a sense that, look, this
is not just a today problem, it's future problem. And the other thing we found, Mandy, was that, you know, with the change in the law of the state is really pushing a lot of the public safety concerns with people who are incompetent they may be a danger to themselves or others, and making an emphasis to put them out of custody basically into a program called Bridges. It's a state program that's intended to help get these people
to navigate through getting back to competency. And we've seen some terrible outcomes from that, including the allegations of the man who killed two people on the sixteenth Street Mall in twenty twenty four. He was a person who was reliefed for outpatient competency treatment and obviously didn't follow through on it, and the results are catastrope.
So I've got former da in Common Sense Institute fellow John Kellner with me.
John.
This is one of those things where I feel like, is this going to be if the State of Colorado really wants to address this, because this is part of a bigger mental health issue that I don't think we have enough in patient facilities, long term in patient facilities to deal with some of the issues that we're seeing, issues that I believe had been significantly exacerbated by the sort of open drug use that we have here in Colorado.
Just from personal experience, I know that when you are a person with any kind of predisposition to schizophrenia and you start using drugs that's going to kick that mental illness into high drive. Not all the time, but it can happen, and it is happening. So what kind of investment And I don't even know if you guys looked at this, what kind of investment would it take on the front end?
And is it sixty.
Million dollars every year or are we looking at we need to invest in facilities in institutionalized care for people that cannot be in the public and then we have sixty million dollars.
Ye, do you know what I'm asking I do.
Yeah. And first of all, I agree with you wholeheartedly that the permissive nature around drugs in our state really set us apart even from states like Utah and their outcomes with mental health treatment where they don't have this
sort of permissive environment around drugs. And a lot of this has been brought on, frankly by ourselves, by the voters and passing laws that have increased access to things like incredibly high potency marijuana, right and those sorts of things I do think contributes significantly to our mental health crisis in this state. To answer your question directly, Yeah, sixty million dollars a year is just the starting point
to meet the baseline of to consent to create. The reality is we don't have the physical infrastructure either to deal with the number of people that actually need to go through the competency process. So historically we use the Cardo Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo, and the people there are fantastic, They do incredibly good work. It is very hard though, for them to recruit and retain top none salent down there. It's just a difficult spot to have
your state's primary mental health hospital. And one of our recommendations and the common sensens to report, is that we really do need to explore expanding the state hospital capacity with new infrastructure and frankly with the Denver area facility, and we could leverage a lot of the output of tremendous healthcare practitioners coming out of Anshoot's medical care.
Yeah.
I agree, I mean in that sense, I really agree.
When you think about how much has just been spent by the City of Denver building or buying these this housing and I realized that if we're talking about secure housing, and you can't just buy a double tree and switch it into you know, secure housing for people suffering with severe mental illness, but that investment in space is one of those things that in my mind, it just we have to buckle up, find the money, and make it happen, because we're releasing people who are not just a danger
to themselves, they're a danger to other people. And I hate to say it, I think we've already seen it. To your point, you reference the guy on the Sixteenth Street Mall that had, you know, been released to outpatient care and never followed up and nothing happened. People are going to get killed, and I don't want to see that happen. So is there the political will And this is just a you don't have to answer this question if you don't want to wait into the politics of it.
But it seems to me that now, because of the high profile nature of Devisa Ephraim and the other gentleman that you referenced as well, this might be the best moment for a big swing on this.
But is there any.
Sort of bills that you guys are aware of that would be that big swing.
I've heard legislators are obviously talking about it. I mean, you know, to their credit, they're hearing the outcry, they're seeing the issue, and I think there's a lot of some introception going on with respect to the twenty twenty four law, which kind of poured gasoline on a fire by mandating the automatic dismissal of these cases rather than potentially re evaluating them. And it also didn't provide for when there's an automatic dismissal, a handoff to the civil
competency system where you're talking about civil commitment. You know, they don't have to case going on, but they still need treatment, right they're a danger to themselves or others. And instead the result was well, case dismissed. I guess you're out the door of the jail, and you know, best of luck to you. That is not a way, of course that Colorado should take care rankly some of the most vulnerable people, and then putting that public safety
risk out on the community is absolutely unacceptable. Is their political will. I mean we're already talking about, you know, folks saying we are underwater with our budget, right. I think the budget is significantly increased the year over year, but there has to be a focus on public safety primary responsibility of government in my opinion, and hopefully we'll see some legislators talk about bold solutions instead of sort of nabbling around the edges of well, let's add ten
twenty more beds. No, we need a bold action plan.
Well, I would say, John, I would think that there's something in it for both sides here in that Republicans can sell it to their caucuses because it is a law and order issue, and Democrats should be able to sell it to their off you know, their caucuses based on the humanity issue they don't want.
I don't think Democrats want.
To see these people that we see on the streets of Denver and other places obviously out of their minds with either mental illness or drugs or both. Like people don't want to see people live that way. So I would hope that this would be one issue where we could get the two sides to really say, we've to your point, We've got to address.
This in a bold way, and hopefully that will happen.
We shall see, John, you guys are doing such great work at the Common Sense Institute. I put a link to this paper on my blog today so people can find it there, and you really should read it because this is a serious, serious issue. And again, as John just mentioned, I don't want Tom nibbling around the edges either.
Well, thank you, Mandy. I appreciate you bringing attention to this issue and appreciate you having me.
On all right, John, thanks so much. We'll talk again in the future.