NCJ Number
202723
Date Published
March 2002
Length
81 pages
Annotation
This assessment of the implementation of Washington State's Dangerous Mentally Ill Offender (DMIO) Law (SSB 5011) focuses on how the process of defining, identifying, and selecting DMIO's has been conducted, as well as the treatment and services provided to an early group of released DMIO's.
Abstract
The law is intended to improve the process of identifying and providing additional mental health treatment for mentally ill offenders who are being released from the Department of Corrections who pose a threat to themselves or others. The identification and selection process for DMIO's was initially envisioned as a rigorous and scientific process that would involve clear definitions of what constitutes "mental disorder" and "dangerousness;" however, the inconsistent quality of mental illness documentation has caused difficulties in identifying mentally ill offenders in prisons. It has also been an obstacle for the statewide review committee, which must make its decisions based on existing documentation. In addition, formal methods for decisionmaking and documenting decisions are lacking. The second implementation problem consists of an insurance crisis that involves the burden of DMIO liability. Insurers have informed community treatment providers that if they continue to serve the DMIO program, their insurance will be canceled. Thus, most community providers will be searching for a new insurer. For this assessment, data were obtained on the first 36 DMIO participants released from confinement. The results show that the DMIO program is making a significant improvement in providing prerelease and postrelease mental health and postrelease chemical dependency services to offenders. It is too early to tell whether these increased services have resulted in reduced criminal recidivism for DMIO's. The study recommends that insurance liability issues be resolved immediately in order to prevent program failure. Further, in order to improve its ability to identify mentally ill inmates, the Department of Corrections (DOC) needs to establish and maintain more detailed electronic mental health records on inmates. The DOC should adopt standardized methods for assessing the dangerousness of mentally ill offenders. The DMIO selection process should be conducted in two stages; first, decide whether an offender suffers from a qualifying mental disorder; and second, determine the offender's risk for future dangerousness. 17 figures, 11 tables, an 11-item bibliography, and appended supplementary information on the identification and selection of DMIO's