OrlandoSentinel.com

EDITORIAL

A win for all

Our position: A local program has established a good, legal way to treat mentally ill inmates.

It isn't often, it seems, when government agencies are able to come up with a common-sense solution to a challenging problem.

Score one for the Department of Children & Families and the Orange-Osceola Public Defender's Office.

In February, they created a pilot program to treat mentally ill inmates languishing in jails because there aren't enough beds to move them to other facilities.

Statewide, the average jail time was 56 days, well beyond the 15 days required by Florida law to determine one's competency.

But the program circumvented the backlog by bringing a network of 10 social workers and psychologists to jails to treat nonviolent inmates with counseling and medication in the hopes of establishing their competency.

Before the program, more than 20 inmates from Orange and Osceola had waited from six to nine months for proper treatment. By the time the pilot program ended in July, only two inmates needed further treatment in state hospitals.

It's an approach that should be used statewide. It alleviates the strain on bed space in the state's three mental hospitals; it targets those in need of serious help; and it allows others with lesser problems to return to court to face charges after getting treatment.

DCF picked up the cost, set at $220,000. The program continues under the good-faith assumption that the funding will be available during the next fiscal budget.

That decision should be obvious -- for Orange, Osceola and, hopefully, the other 65 counties in Florida.