Locked in Limbo: Mental Illness & Inmate Backlogs

KXAN-TV
05/18/2020

Every year, thousands of mentally ill men and women languish in Texas' county jails. Incapable of standing trial, they wait in line behind hundreds of other people — sometimes over a year — for a bed in a state hospital to get the help they need. As Texas' population booms, its leaders have recognized this problem is also growing, but their efforts to shrink the backlog have failed. In 2019, the number of people stuck on the state's wait list — with their cases stalled and constitutional rights possibly violated — reached historic levels. KXAN’s "Locked in Limbo" investigation highlighted the stories of the families caught up in this broken system and the state's struggle to find solutions.

During our investigation, state lawmakers vowed to further explore the success of other options for mental competency restoration, like jail-based and outpatient treatment, to speed up the system and ensure its effectiveness. Those leaders have discussed the possibility of new legislation in 2021 and grants to help fund the programs.

This project generated quality discussion in the community and provided an opportunity for many people to speak up and share their own stories. "Locked in Limbo" was also highlighted by the Marshall Project in its daily newsletter and on its website. And the national trade publication, TVNewsCheck, also wrote an article about the impact and rollout of the project.

Multi-platform Project:

“Locked in Limbo” was created by the station’s Catalyst team – a group of investigators that takes a multi-platform approach to complex topics like missing persons, mass violence and now – mental competency.
• We produced a three-part investigative docuseries on families impacted by this problem, along with two additional videos focusing on solutions to mental health treatment in jails.
• The third season of our weekly investigative podcast, also called "Catalyst," accompanies the series, taking a closer look at one specific case – a veteran who bounced between jail and state hospital for nearly four years.
• We wrote an immersive, long-form article with photos and data features to further analyze the number of inmates on the state ’s wait list and how long they’re waiting. It also explores a mother’s three-month fight to get her son into a state hospital after he wielded sword in front of her during a “delusional” episode.
• Additionally, we built a mental health resource page for Texans looking for help in this area. It includes links to a variety of mental health and criminal justice groups with expertise on navigating the system.
• Other content we created includes: a "Why Investigate Now?" video to explain why our team decided to tackle this topic during the coronavirus pandemic, a handful of other articles taking a hyper-focus on some of the other problems we discovered during our investigation, and a half-hour on-air special.

Reporting Process & Challenges:

For almost a year, KXAN chipped away at this project – even as COVID-19 hit the state and forced us to nd new ways to complete the work. We interviewed more than a dozen people for this project – mental health advocates, legal experts, and county and state officials. We requested jail records and rosters from dozens of Texas counties, including the numbers of inmates in Central Texas jails who were awaiting transfer to state mental health facilities. We also parsed years of data collected by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, federal lawsuits over the state ’s wait list, state-commissioned reports on the hospital system, legislative grants and state spending records on new mental hospitals.

Many of our record requests and efforts to obtain interviews and review state data were blocked due to medical privacy laws and ongoing lawsuits. Record requests that could reveal a person’s mental illness were thwarted and sent to the Texas Attorney General’s Office for a ruling that could take months to return. Who exactly sits on the state ’s wait lists for a mental hospital bed remains tough to pinpoint because county jails and HHSC would not release those names.

Beyond the difficulty in obtaining public records, the stigma of mental illness kept many of the people stuck in the system, and their families, from speaking out and participating in interviews. However, we were able to connect with a number individuals who were incarcerated and experienced Texas’ backlogged state hospital system. We traveled to several cities around Central Texas to visit and capture video inside state hospitals and jails and to conduct interviews with families.

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Additional Links:
MAIN PAGE / INVESTIGTATIVE DOCUSERIES / SOLUTIONS VIDEOS
CATALYST PODCAST
IMMERSIVE, LONGFORM ARTICLE / DATA FEATURES
SUPPORT & OUTREACH PAGE

FEATURE: INSIDE THE INVESTIGATION
FEATURE: WHY INVESTIGATE NOW?

HALF-HOUR SPECIAL

PROJECT TRAILER

IMPACT PROMO

Submitted by Josh Hinkle.