TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas — Travis County leaders recently took a big step to address a growing problem in the county.
Commissioners voted unanimously to begin the process of building a new mental health diversion center, a place where those facing a mental health crisis could go, instead of jail.
Travis County Judge Andy Brown told us the building is at least two years away from opening, as staff is still working on the fine details, including function, cost, hiring a design firm and, eventually, a builder.
The Democrat says the county jail still has a large number of folks who have unmet mental health needs and a significant number of people waiting for beds to open in the Texas state hospital system.
“We have gone from about 1,400 people in our jail at COVID to about 2,200 people today. And a lot of that, over 40% by our measure, in reality it’s probably more like 70%, is people who have unmet mental health needs,” Brown said on Inside Texas Politics.
Brown says they’ve visited a number of similar facilities already operating across the country, including a recent visit to Tucson, AZ.
But he says the best example he’s seen is in Nashville, TN.
“They have 30 beds for men, 30 for women. People go in there. They first get arrested and booked. And then, if they complete the 14-day average stay in the mental health facility, then their charges are expunged,” he explained to us. “And they have noticed a 70% reduction in recidivism for people who go through that mental health diversion center in Nashville. And their jail population, unlike ours, has been going down since this center was opened two years ago.”
During our conversation with Brown, he also reacted to the Texas Senate passing SB 29, which would ban local governments, and even the state, from enacting mask or vaccine requirements, as well as prevent school and business closures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The Texas Medical Association opposes the bill, which now heads to the House, as did Brown, who told us it’s all about politics and not about science.
And he says the measures they undertook in Travis County during the pandemic saved lives.
“We had a death rate in Travis County that was much lower than the state average. And in fact, my understanding is if the state had the same death rate from COVID that we had here in Travis County, there would be another 40,000 people alive today in the state of Texas,” said Brown.