Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, announced July 14 that the U.S. Department of Justice has awarded around $11 million to the Governor’s Public Safety Office to fund crisis intervention like mental health and rehabilitation programs.
Following a $21 million DOJ grant to Texas in 2023, these new funds will continue to support and expand crisis intervention initiatives, including mental health courts, drug courts, veterans’ courts and outpatient treatment programs. Grants come from the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program, which was founded in 2022 as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Local governments are entitled to at least 40% of total funds allocated to states from the grant.
U.S. Congress introduced the act and signed it into law in June 2022 in response to mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. The act is structured to support programs promoting gun-safe environments. Beyond crisis intervention programs, it grants states funding to expand community health models, safety measures in schools and legal protections for domestic violence victims.
Molly Lopez, director of the Texas Institute for Excellence in Mental Health, wrote in a statement that funding for critical programs like these will benefit the UT community by providing additional resources for struggling students.
“Community mental health and substance use services are chronically underfunded and additional resources will surely support individuals in the UT community, both directly and indirectly,” Lopez wrote. “Investments in training first responders to recognize behavioral health crises and respond with evidence-based strategies for de-escalation make us all safer.”
A 2021 study by researchers from Dell Medical School and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs found that a crisis program can be effective in lowering societal economic burdens and may help individuals stay out of the criminal justice system, demonstrating that similar programs may have the same effect.
According to the study, the residential facility operated by Integral Care, the designated local mental health authority for Travis County, could save the healthcare system up to $2.8 million annually. This is critical in areas such as those surrounding the Austin State Hospital, which, according to the study, is a psychiatric facility where unmet medical needs contribute to $93 million in emergency department costs and $85 million in jail costs.
Travis County Judge Kim Williams, who serves the Misdemeanor Mental Health Docket, said there are roughly 700 individuals in the system at any given time, with 131 of those individuals on the incompetent list as of July, meaning they are unable to stand trial.
“People often say ‘You can’t prosecute your way out of mental illness,’ and I think that’s an accurate statement,” Williams said. “We want to give people the support and … try to help people get back on their feet.”
Williams said while support toward court programs will always be beneficial, greater attention is needed to building long-term support systems to prevent individuals from relapsing and enable them to become proactive members of society.
Lopez shared similar sentiments and said crisis prevention above all should be the goal.
“I think that as we invest in our crisis system, we need an equal if not greater investment in those parts of the behavioral health system that prevent crises,” Lopez wrote. “If we don’t address some of the challenges that young people face today, we likely won’t be able to meet their future needs with the crisis response system we are creating.”