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Supervisors hear limits and successes of behavioral health court, diversion and jail treatment as city plans data-driven needs assessment
Summary
Supervisors and city officials described strong individual outcomes from San Francisco's collaborative treatment courts but long waits and limited bed capacity that constrain scale. A MacArthur grant and a proposed independent needs assessment (estimated at about $500,000) are expected to guide investments to shorten time to treatment and reduce jail population.
San Francisco 'April 12, 2019 ' The Board of Supervisors' Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee heard evidence Friday that collaborative courts and new state diversion law are helping many justice-involved people get treatment but that limited treatment beds, long placement waits and fragmented services still block broader impact.
Judge Harry Dorfman, who presides over Behavioral Health Court at the Hall of Justice, described an intensive, team-based court process that frequently requires weeks of clinical assessment and often more than two years of treatment for participants. "It's not a short period of treatment," Dorfman said, noting the median time in the program for graduates was "over 2 years" and giving program counts: roughly 130 clients currently receiving BHC services, about 912 clinical assessments from 2016 to 2018 (roughly 300/year), 378 clinically eligible and 204 accepted into BHC in that three-year span. He said 78 percent of BHC graduates avoided arrest within a year of graduation.
The judge also described the new state mental health diversion law and the judicial role it…
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