House Corrections and Institutions Committee asks for feasibility study, recommends AHS operation of forensic facility

The House Corrections and Institutions Committee directed legislative staff to draft a feasibility plan for a proposed forensic facility and signaled it does not support placing the facility under Department of Corrections control.

"The committee recommends that a forensic facility be operated by AHS or jointly by departments with specific knowledge of the qualifying conditions," Katie McDonough of the Office of Legislative Council said, presenting a draft summary of prior committee conversations about S.193.

The committee’s move follows testimony the members said revealed a statewide gap in programs for competency restoration. "There's a real gap in that there is no program," the committee chair said, urging that the feasibility plan address how competency restoration will be provided, both for individuals who would require secure care and for the larger population that can be served in community settings.

Why it matters: Committee members emphasized that who runs and how the facility operates affect security, clinical care and court obligations. Members said they do not want people subject to forensic placement to be placed under DOC custody by default. "We don't want that person to be under the custody of the commissioner of corrections," the chair said, noting the committee is "pretty clear" on removing commissioner-of-corrections custody language from the draft bill.

What the committee asked for: McDonough said the feasibility plan should identify a proposed location, the facility’s likely size, the entity responsible for operations and services, a timeline and an estimated development cost. She also suggested including the forensic definition language from Act 27 of 2025 as a template but tailoring it to match House Judiciary’s narrower population definition and to explicitly consider competency restoration.

Members debated operational details and safeguards. Several members urged sight-and-sound separation and separate programming (for example, separate dining and recreation schedules) if a forensic unit were colocated on a corrections campus, and some warned against commingling high-need forensic patients with elderly or disabled residents in nonsecure settings.

Capacity and cost trade-offs came up repeatedly: members recalled prior campus plans that proposed large complexes and noted public resistance to high bed counts. McDonough and members discussed both a modest in-state model and interim out-of-state placements, with McDonough saying the plan should report on out-of-state placement options while an in-state facility is developed.

Drafting mechanics and timing: Staff and chairs discussed whether to designate AHS (or the secretary of human services) as an interim statutory point person or to structure effective dates so feasibility work informs any change to custody and rulemaking language. McDonough said she would begin drafting the feasibility plan immediately and coordinate with House Judiciary and committee chairs, aiming to return coordinated draft language and a feasibility report to the committees.

Next steps: The committee asked McDonough to prepare a stand-alone feasibility plan and to confer with the chairs and House Judiciary staff so the committees can consider a consolidated draft. No formal vote or motion was recorded on the floor; members directed staff to report back with the feasibility plan and suggested language changes.