Minneapolis » By neighborhood:
St. Paul » By neighborhood:

Site navigation

By section

‹

January

›
SMTWTFS
 
 
 
 
1
 
2
 
3
 
4
 
5
 
6
 
7
 
8
 
9
 
10
 
11
 
12
 
13
 
14
 
15
 
16
 
17
 
18
 
19
 
20
 
21
 
22
 
23
 
24
 
25
 
26
 
27
 
28
 
29
 
30
 
31
 

Frost/Nixon onstage, with Stacey Keach

Search events by type.

Add an event

Hennepin County grants funding to program to help mentally ill offenders

Leave a commentPrint this pageReprint rights
By Chros McDougall , Downtown Journal
July 08, 2007

The Hennepin County Board of Commissioners recently voted to spend more than $250,000 to fully implement a program that supervises chronically mentally ill offenders.

“You want to have a place where people can go to have their medications monitored and modified if need be,” Hennepin County commissioner Peter McLaughlin said.

The county’s $269,496 allocation to PRISM, which stands for Providing Resources and Integrating Services to the Mentally Ill, will go toward the program’s facility and medical staffing.

Human Services and Public Health will house the program from a county- owned space at 1800 Chicago Ave.

Community Corrections will get some of the allocation for medical staffing, which will include personnel from Hennepin Faculty Associates, a group affiliated with the Hennepin County Medical Center.

The county formed the Downtown Mental Health and Criminal Justice Task Force three years ago, at the same time the city first asked the county for emergency sheriffs deputies to help patrol Downtown.

McLaughlin said he pushed for the task force because he wanted the city to have two different but parallel approaches to fighting crime in Minneapolis.

“The criminal justice response was not the best thing that could happen,” McLaughlin said of how to handle mentally ill offenders. “If you arrest them, they serve some time, then go out and do it again. The idea was to break that cycle.”

The task force proposed PRISM in 2006 as a one-stop facility for offenders under the jurisdiction of Mental Health Court.

Article Tags:

Comments

Sgt. Steve Wickelgren's picture

Mentally Ill Offenders

Submitted by Sgt. Steve Wickelgren (not verified) on Tue, 07/31/2007 - 12:27.

I would ask McLaughlin if he plans on providing CIT training to these county deputies working in downtown Minneapolis. If he is familiar with the CIT concept, he should know that jailing a mentally ill person is not always the best option and that law enforcement officers trained in CIT know this.

Post new comment

The Twin Cities Daily Planet encourages readers to submit comments voicing their views in a constructive and civil fashion. The editors reserve the right to edit comments for length and clarity, and we may decline to publish comments that advertise services or goods, take an intemperate tone, or that contain potentially libelous allegations.
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
1 + 8 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.

MUSIC | The indescribable Samosa, masters of Indian fusion

By Dwight Hobbes , TC Daily Planet

Ever since I first heard John McLaughlin—back when Lassie was a pup—fusion has mystified me. It takes incredible discipline to learn to play that well, yet cats who can do it sound like they wouldn’t know discipline if they fell over it. The purest of artists understand the rules so well, they’re able to break them over one knee. That’s the caliber we’re talking about when you bring up Samosa—who are so monstrous, their press release quite plausibly boasts, “Because of our unique sound, we have been virtually indescribable by even connoisseurs of fusion music.” No brag, just fact. These guys can blow. MORE »

News you can use

New Seward Co-op opens Thursday!

By Mary Turck , TC Daily Planet

The new Seward Co-op, in its bright, green building at 2823 East Franklin, will open for business on Thursday, January 8 at 10 a.m., with a ribbon-cutting, give-aways and general celebration. The $10.5 million store doubles the retail space of the old store, with 13,000 square feet, and also has a community classroom on the second floor. The building includes Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) principles and the Co-op is hoping to earn a LEED gold rating. MORE »