Utah State Hospital is working to reduce wait
What actually happens, however, is that some of those defendants often end up on a hospital waiting list for a period of time and usually are jailed until a bed opens up at the hospital.
The good news is that since a 2007 state audit, the hospital has been tracking those on court-ordered waiting lists and has made sizable inroads in reducing the number of people on the waiting list as well as the wait time.
"Competency" in legal terms is a relatively low standard. A person is competent if he or she can understand the charges against him or her, comprehend the court process and help attorneys in his or her defense. It is quite different from an insanity defense, which has much more stringent standards and is rarely raised in Utah.
As the state's population has grown, so has the number of people who are mentally ill, which is one of many factors affecting the hospital.
"Even though the population has grown, the state has been proactive in trying to find ways to not criminalize the mentally ill, but there still is a shortage of beds," said Utah State Hospital administrator Dallas Earnshaw.
The other beds include: 182 for other adults, 72 for pediatric services and five beds for acute recovery treatment.
In the past, there often was an average of about 20 criminal defendants on the waiting list to get "competency restoration" treatment at the hospital. Depending on how full the hospital was, wait times could be as long as 10 weeks.
The legislative audit recommended that the hospital speed up procedures for admitting and discharging such patients and also suggested the counties be charged a fee if they did not arrive promptly to take defendants whose competency had been restored back to their local jails.
The audit also urged better communication among the hospital, county attorney offices and local jails.
"Implementing those strategies was actually very effective," Earnshaw said.
As of January and February of this year, the waiting list contained an average of 18 people on it during those two months. The numbers on average began declining: March (13 on the list), April (15), May (12), June (11), July (9), August (7) and September (15).
Recent comments
The Utah State Hospital gives wonderful care to its patients in spite…
Deanna Allred | Oct. 10, 2008 at 10:56 p.m.
