An article from a few years ago, although it doesn't seem like much has changed. I guess a lot really boils down to the local political climate and how much clout your parents have...and just plain old luck, one kind or the other.
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USAToday
Posted 7/7/2004 6:48 PMReport: Juvenile jails being substituted for mental hospitalsBy Pamela Brogan, Gannett News ServiceWASHINGTON — The nation's juvenile detention centers have become warehouses for mentally ill youth, including many who have not committed any crimes, concludes a report issued by Congress on Wednesday.
The youths are sent to the detention centers because they are unable to get mental health services in their communities, according to the study by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee.
"This misuse of detention centers as holding areas for mental health treatment is unfair to youth, undermines their health, disrupts the function of detention centers and is costly to society," said the study.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who requested the study along with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said, "We get the picture, and it's deplorable."
Collins, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing on the issue Wednesday. She is sponsoring legislation to make mental heath services more widely available.
"It's a tragedy that we are incarcerating children because they are sick," Collins said.
The study, whose authors said was the first of its kind, surveyed 698 juvenile detention facilities across the nation. Seventy-five percent — or 524 — of the detention centers responded, from every state except New Hampshire.
Among the study's findings:
• In 33 states, mentally ill youths were held in detention centers with no charges against them because there was no place else for them to go.
• Between Jan. 1, 2003, and June 30, 2003, 15,000 detained youths were waiting to obtain mental health services.
• Every day, about 2,000 youths remained locked up because mental health services are not available for them. That accounts for 7% of all youths held in juvenile detention.
• One detention center reported holding a 7-year-old who was waiting for mental health services. The center was one of 117 facilities that detained children 10 and younger.
"It is a terrible miscarriage of justice to detain or incarcerate children in order that they might be able to have a chance of getting any mental health services," testified Ernestine Gray, chief judge of the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in New Orleans. "Our detention facilities should not be used as substitute mental hospitals."
Leonard Dixon, director of the juvenile detention facility in Wayne County, Mich., said the report's findings are serious and widespread. He testified that 56% of youths admitted to his facility in the last year needed or received mental health services.
Dixon said most facilities don't have the resources to provide treatment or services for mentally ill youths.
"This creates an atmosphere of conflict and unrest for everyone, and the potential for crisis can be high, " Dixon said.
Others testified that mentally ill children are sent to juvenile detention centers because parents don't have access to services in schools and insurance often doesn't pay for mental health treatment. Mental health advocates testified that local agency officials counsel parents to call the police when a child has a mental health crisis because no other services are available.
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