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Miami Herald
February 12, 2004
Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.
EDITORIAL
Florida's Baker Act needs reform
John Beraglia and Robert Stephen Mills III are tragic examples of why Florida's involuntary-commitment law, known as the Baker Act, needs reform. Beraglia, arrested more than 120 times for petty crimes and diagnosed as psychotic but only sporadically on medication, died in a violent confrontation with Broward Sheriff guards in a Pompano Beach jail in 2001. Mills, a homeless 19-year-old with bipolar disease, moved out of his mother's home after refusing to take his medication. He was killed by Miami-Dade police officers after he lunged at them with a shard of glass.
Stabilized, released
The Baker Act allows court-ordered involuntary commitment in a hospital for mentally disabled people who refuse treatment and are a danger to themselves or others. The Baker Act generally applies only to someone already in ''the system'' -- those who have had previous encounters with the law or have shown such violent tendencies that a court approves hospitalization. But hospitalization doesn't necessarily mean long-term treatment. Rather, individuals are stabilized, released and often stop taking medication again.
The Baker Act reforms that the Florida Sheriffs Association wants the Legislature to approve would allow civil courts to order outpatient treatment and monitoring for six months for those who refuse to take medication or are too ill to recognize their condition. Under that change, Mills' mother could have obtained the treatment she twice sought for her son but was denied because he hadn't been arrested or been violent prior to his fateful encounter with police. The proposed reforms would also address those who cycle repeatedly through the jails, as did Beraglia, by allowing a court to order long-term outpatient care.
Psychiatric exam
The state House approved this reform last year, but it has barely been on the Florida Senate's radar screen. Yet states with laws allowing court-ordered outpatient treatment (41 in all) report beneficial results. New York's law went into effect in 1999. It reports that court-mandated outpatient treatment resulted in 63 percent fewer people needing hospitalization, 55 percent fewer being homeless and 75 percent fewer being arrested.
By contrast, the Florida sheriffs' group cites as an example one individual in Florida who cycled through jails 41 times in 36 months. After each arrest, another psychiatric exam was required, at an approximate cost of $2,000 per exam. In all, that's more than $80,000 squandered on one person still in want of effective treatment.
The proposed reforms are humane, practical steps that would put the dollars that Florida spends on mental health to more effective use by placing these troubled individuals where they belong -- in treatment rather than in jail.