BENTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark. — Benton County is now among the first in Arkansas to offer a Mental Health Court. The new option is meant to address why the defendant committed a crime and help them get onto a better path.
"It was very exciting last Friday to have that first person come in," specialty courts coordinator Michelle Barrett said. "It's been a long process. I think we're all excited, and we're all pumped to get started with this,"
The Benton County Quorum Court approved starting a mental health court in March 2023. However, the specialty court only recently started operations with a $100,000 grant from a division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). That money will help fund the first year of the program. The second and third year is $225,000.
"It will continue to support another public defender and then the case manager for our program," Barrett said. "In addition, it will allow us to pay for counseling and psychiatric services in the short term, while we help people get their insurance in place so we can ensure long-term services beyond drug court."
She said it is a 15-month-long process with intensive mental health services including seeing therapists, receiving medication management assistance from a physiatrist, and other resources.
"For those who also have a struggle with substance use disorder, we will get them plugged in with substance use counselors," Barrett said. "They'll get plugged in with community support systems that can help them navigate day-to-day. We'll work on daily living skills for those who maybe haven't been stable. It will be a group of people hoping that we can help them get on the right path."
However, there are a few qualifications to be eligible for mental health court. Benton County Circuit Judge for the third division Thomas Smith said there are limitations depending on the crimes people have committed.
"It's not really going to be set up for people with sex crimes or real violent crimes, but there'll be a lot of different crimes that they'll be eligible if they've committed," Smith said. "They'll be eligible to come in if they have a mental health need."
Smith is overseeing this program and he has a few goals in mind.
"We're trying to find all the best ways to help people that have committed crimes to one, keep them from committing other crimes, but two, really help them change their lives so they can stay out of the criminal system entirely," Smith said. "We really view this as another opportunity of another specialty court to find the right need for that person, find the right treatment plan for that person, and really give them the best opportunity to change that life and build that new community."
Barrett believes this option is better than trying to expand county jails or prisons.
"We've seen with our drug court and Veterans Treatment Court is 90+ percent of the people who come in and graduate, and about 85% of those don't come back in the system within three years," Barrett said. "We expect to see the same result, and possibly even a little better, with the mental health population. So it really does change the number of people rotating in and out of our system, both probation and prison setting."
Barrett said the county does not like to put a cap on the number of people who can participate in the program but she is expecting around 20 to 25 people to enroll.
"I think we'll have growth beyond that, and then we'll start looking at, how do we get more staff, and how do we expand which is what we've done with each of our other programs," Barrett said.
The program has already accepted an additional four people with at least two of them starting in November. The Mental Health Court is also available to people living in Benton County.
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