Not if, but when

Jail plan will happen one way or another, but fundamental flaws remain

A 9-year-old boy sits in an old metal chair in a cramped office, packed with lawyers, social workers, men in uniform, and a judge. It’s supposed to be a courtroom. It looks more like a white cardboard box. The roof leaks. The air is thick and stale. It smells like mold and sweat. Everyone in the room and in the hallway is stressed out and shouting at each other. The boy puts his hands under his legs, and tightens his shoulders, trying to make himself smaller. He did nothing wrong. 

The courtroom is inside the Tulsa County Juvenile Detention building, just west of downtown. His mother is at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center, also known as the Tulsa County Jail. A police officer put her there because there were no available beds at Parkside or Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health. She cannot afford psychiatric treatment or the correct medication. She made a mistake, and DHS took action. They took away her son. The cop found a way to get her to DLM so he wouldn’t have to drive her all the way out to Woodward. The psychiatrist on staff has given her drugs to calm her down. She and 400 other inmates are getting drugged, but not treated. The state can’t afford to transport dangerous inmates who need to be in prison. Instead, the jail is overcrowded and she’ll have to sleep on the floor tonight.  She did nothing wrong. 

According to the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (ODMHSAS) 2012 Budget Request, Oklahoma ranks No. 2 nationally for serious psychological distress in the adult population. In 2010 and 2011, the ODMHSAS slashed its budget by approximately $25 million. A recent budget shows a slight increase, but the issue is clear: the state has neglected to properly fund mental health treatment.

The result? In a Feb. 14 report by KOTV, Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office Major Shannon Clark was quoted as saying, “Jails are depositories for most of the mentally ill in our society. There are no other resources; there are no other places for them to go.”

David L. Moss is the largest mental-health facility in Oklahoma. We are not choosing to treat our sick. We’re choosing to let law enforcement deal with them. But law enforcement doesn’t know how. 

An informational handout provided by Tulsa County Commissioner Karen Keith at TulsaNow’s March meeting describes the problem: “The Jail was never designed for this function and it is neither safe nor effective risk management to mix mentally ill inmates with general-population inmates. The problem, once the responsibility of the state and federal government, is now shifted to the local communities. ... Sherriff Stanley Glanz is pushing a sooner-rather-than-later agenda in an effort to address the issues and protect the inmates.”

Tulsa County Juvenile Detention was built in 1968 to accommodate 50 employees. The staff has grown to three times that many. It created makeshift courtrooms, where offenders and their victims wait together for their trials. Several hallways and bathrooms have become improvised offices. Conditions in the building, described by a grand jury report filed in December 2013, border on inhumane.

The county is on its knees, begging taxpayers to vote yes on a special-ballot measure that will raise $54.3 million to pay for a new Juvenile Justice Center and building expansions at David L. Moss. The money will come from a .067-percent sales tax — a renewal for the city, an increase for the rest of the county. Voters will decide in an election on April 1.

Opponents of this tax argue that Tulsa County should not be asking for more money. Many point out that there will be a surplus of collected taxes available after 2016 from the Vision2025 tax package. The debate, then, seems to center not on “if,” but “when.”

Do we vote to build these new facilities now and decide what to do with the surplus later? Or do we let this .067-percent sales tax roll off for the city as it has for the rest of the county, and agree that we’ll use the surplus later for the new jail improvements?

It seems better to use money we’ve already collected, versus paying for these changes with new debt. On the other hand, the County is near its breaking point. It’s spread itself thin to compensate for the state not doing its job.

While politicians, businessmen, and lawyers quibble over numbers, trying to decide whether to make these changes now or later, a boy sits in an old metal chair, in a cramped office, away from his mother, waiting for the adults to decide his fate.

Author’s note: The boy depicted in this story and his mother are, technically, fictional; all DHS and mental-health records are kept confidential. The two, though figments, would seem all-too-familiar to the police officers, teachers, DHS staff, and medical professionals in our community who serve children and families like this, in our city, every day.