Writer: Olivia Morley
Published February 6, 2021
Rome News-Tribune
Looking to programs already established in Fulton County, the Floyd County Stepping Up Task Force is looking into other ways to achieve their goal of reducing the jail recidivism rate and connecting those with mental illness to help.
Two members from the Fulton County Stepping Up Task Force discussed their own jail diversion programs for those with mental illness who have been caught in a cycle of incarceration.
After seeing Kristin Schillig, a project manager for the county’s court mental health initiatives, present their findings at a conference, Floyd County Commissioner Allison Watters asked them to share their findings and give them some ideas on how to move forward.
“I think it’s just eye opening for those of us who don’t work in that field,” Watters said. “I think if more people in our community knew what the judges and the sheriffs and the jail workers were dealing with, a lot more people would be pushing for this initiative.”
While some projects are set in motion, such as the Floyd County Jail mental health unit, Watters and the rest of the task force, including Sheriff Dave Roberson, want to seek out other ideas to help combat the cycle.
Fulton County Superior Court Senior Judge Doris Downs serves as the task force’s chair and gave her own take on how their programs have changed the justice system in the county.
“As a judge, the reason I got so passionate about it is because I just saw that we were spinning wheels and wasting money,” Downs said. “It was unbelievable: you arrest somebody for a minor offense who is clearly experiencing trauma, we throw them in jail which has no help for them at all... they sit much longer than anybody else who is charged with that kind of a crime because the family doesn’t want them back until they are stabilized...it’s very frustrating and the misdemeanor crimes are the worst.”
Over time, the judge began to realize she was seeing the same people over and over, cycling through the justice system. The better way to handle the problem is to find people help, she said, instead of throwing them in jail.
The key has been collecting data on those who are stuck in the system and finding commonalities.
“We’re playing the long game guys, this system didn’t get this way over night,” Schillig said.
While putting together an application for a grant, they were able to put together a comprehensive data collection system and a thorough analysis of their justice system as a whole.
Starting with this foundation, they were able to receive a $250,000 Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program grant from the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at University of Georgia.
“This grant opened up a lot of opportunities for us,” she said. “We did a lot of sequential mapping, tons of data collecting, we looked at different gaps in our system to see how to fill those in.”
Sequential mapping is an exercise that maps out the cycle of mentally ill people in a system, starting from the initial arrest and going to their reentry into the system and connecting them to support groups and help.
She also said putting together a structure for leadership and meetings has been very important for them as they focus on different projects for the county.
“The most important thing is getting a good plan and figuring out a couple easy wins you can do,” Schillig said. “Just figure out what to prioritize because it is overwhelming.”
Once a county is able to set up a diversion process to first work with people commit misdemeanors over and over again. Getting low-level offenders into treatment is a lot easier than those with felonies, the judge said.
Downs commented on the fact that Floyd County has the benefit of being a lot smaller than Fulton and having a smaller government to work closely on such an initiative together.
