[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1519-1520]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          MENTAL HEALTH REFORM

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on another note, I wish to spend a few 
minutes talking about a very important hearing that we will be having 
tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee, something that I feel very 
passionately about, and that is finding a way forward on mental health 
reform. As shocking as it is, our jails and our streets have become 
places where people suffering from mental illness basically are left 
without treatment and without recourse.
  Tomorrow I will have the honor of chairing that hearing where we will 
discuss the intersection of our mental health system such as it is and 
our criminal justice system, and hopefully we will be able to find a 
way forward to push toward real reform. The goal of the hearing is to 
better understand how to bring help and support for those who struggle 
with mental illness.
  This is an area where we can and we must do better. Too often, after 
the fact, we find out that families faced with the choice of allowing 
their loved ones' mental health to continue deteriorating, letting 
their illness spiral out of control until they become a danger to 
themselves or others--there are very few choices available to families 
whose loved ones are becoming more and more ill. True, they could go to 
court and seek a court order, seeking a temporary commitment to a 
mental institution, but that frequently exacerbates frayed relations 
among family members, and it stigmatizes the individual who is 
suffering from mental illness issues.
  We need to give those families more and better choices on how to deal 
with their loved ones, hopefully to keep them from becoming a danger to 
themselves and to the community. Thanks to the marvels of modern 
medicine, for many people suffering from mental illness, if they will 
just follow doctors' orders and take the medication that has been 
prescribed for them--frequently under some doctor's supervision--many 
of them can get much better and become more productive in society.
  One of our witnesses tomorrow will be Pete Earley who wrote a book 
called ``Crazy.'' He is not talking about a person. He is talking about 
our so-called system of mental health treatment. Pete Earley wrote this 
book because, as an accomplished journalist and writer, he knew of no 
other way than to write about the issue to help his very own son who 
had encounter after encounter with the criminal justice system because 
he had untreated mental illness.
  Sadly, the failure to adequately address mental health in the United 
States has led to a drastic increase in the number of mentally ill 
individuals being locked up in prisons and jails, still without 
adequate treatment. I don't think anyone would support the idea of 
turning our prisons and our jails into warehouses for the mentally ill, 
but that is what has happened by default.
  We need to provide better choices to law enforcement officials, to 
families, and to the individuals who suffer from mental illness. So 
often many of them will self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, 
compounding their problems, creating more and more of this turnstile 
effect within the criminal justice system where no one ever gets better 
and the illness never gets treated.
  As criminologists and mental health experts will tell you, locking up 
people with mental illness without treatment will make them only more 
dangerous and increase the risk of crisis, but unfortunately this is an 
all-too-common practice across our country.
  This is a shocking number to me when I read it, but one estimate 
suggests there are as many as 400,000 current inmates in our prisons 
across America who suffer from some form of mental illness. That is 
because, at least in part, the United States has witnessed a rapid 
decline in psychiatric and mental health hospitals over the past 
decades. The idea was that you couldn't institutionalize people so you 
had to let them out. Unfortunately, just letting them out without 
finding a way forward to help them deal with their mental illness 
resulted in many of them becoming homeless, living on our streets or in 
our jails and our prisons when they commit petty crimes such as 
trespassing and the like.
  Since 1960, more than 90 percent of State psychiatric beds have been 
eliminated--90 percent. But prison is a poor and often very harmful 
replacement for a treatment facility. Our goal in the hearing tomorrow 
is to work toward another solution, one that would give families 
greater flexibility, including actual treatment options for the people 
they love.
  A bill I introduced, the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act, 
offers one proven approach to treating mental illness. It borrows from 
a successful model of reform, put into place in my hometown in Bexar 
County, TX, more than a decade ago.
  Let me say a word about borrowing from these successful local and 
State models as opposed to imposing a one-size-fits-all approach at the 
national level, not knowing whether it would actually work in this big 
and diverse country we live in. I believe that taking successful 
examples of best practices at the local and State level--those are the 
best subject matter for us to look at in terms of scaling these up on a 
national level where appropriate.
  The Bexar County sheriff, Susan Pamerleau, a champion of mental 
health reform in San Antonio, will testify tomorrow about the San 
Antonio story. Bexar County's mental health program focuses on 
treatment of the mentally ill instead of just putting them behind bars 
and leaving them untreated. The results have been very impressive.
  These reforms have reduced the size of our overcrowded jails, which 
has been a perennial problem. It has saved tax dollars, and it has 
improved the lives of people who otherwise would be put behind bars and 
left to their own devices.
  I look forward to hearing from Sheriff Pamerleau tomorrow. I bet 
other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and anyone else who 
cares to listen will learn a lot about how we can bring these reforms 
to the rest of the country.
  Another part of this is to help equip law enforcement, teachers, 
judges, and people who work in the courts with the knowledge and skill 
set they need to spot mental illness early on. Wouldn't it be more 
helpful if teachers, parents, and counselors were empowered to help 
identify people who need help early on in school? Doesn't it make sense 
to train our law enforcement officials how to deal with a person 
suffering from a mental health crisis? Do you slap the cuffs on them? 
Do you get engaged in a violent confrontation? Or do you try to 
deescalate the incident in a way that is safer for the law enforcement 
official as well as the person being confronted?
  There are better ways for us to respond effectively at the early 
signs and help to train the people who are in the best position to 
identify people who need help early on. This legislation includes 
specialized training for those on the frontlines, such as law 
enforcement and judicial officials, so they are ready to respond and 
can react swiftly and

[[Page 1520]]

safely should a mental health crisis erupt.
  The truth is that this is a difficult issue and one that raises hard 
questions. But I am grateful to Chairman Grassley of the Senate 
Judiciary Committee for not shying away from this topic but embracing 
it and having witnesses such as those we will have tomorrow who I think 
will open the eyes of many people to something they perhaps don't 
encounter in their daily lives because they don't go to our jails or 
our prisons or they don't have a loved one who suffers from mental 
illness. I think this will open a lot of eyes, and it will help us 
continue the conversation so we can find some common ground and work 
toward real solutions.
  Reform is long overdue. All you need to do is visit our jails, as I 
have done in Harris County, Bexar County, and Dallas County, to see 
that too often our jails are occupied by people who--yes, they may have 
committed petty crimes, nonviolent crimes, but they really need some 
help. If we give them the help, they can turn their lives around and 
become more productive.
  It will save taxpayers money, and I think it will be a much more 
humane and efficient system of dealing with people suffering with a 
mental health crisis. I am hopeful we can advance substantive 
legislation to help those struggling with mental illness and their 
families and, as a result, make our communities safer.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________