Turning a revolving door into a gateway

Orange County might avoid another Kelly Thomas tragedy by adopting a program like Integrated Recovery Network, which tries to break the cycle of jail and living on the street.

James Coley can’t save all his clients. He can’t slay their demons or change the world they live in.

But he goes to work every day and gives it a shot. On a recent morning in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, his to-do list was growing fast, the day’s challenges lined up bumper to bumper.

The client he was supposed to meet was running late, and he needed to get over to County Jail to check on another client who had threatened to drink Clorox. Then there was a third client he was supposed to take from jail to a housing and treatment program in Pasadena. And he also had to deal with the call he’d just gotten about a fourth client who drank vodka for breakfast and was in trouble at a board-and-care facility.

I had hooked up with Coley because of something the father of Kelly Thomas said to me a few weeks ago. Ron Thomas had said that his 37-year-old son, who died violently in July after a run-in with Fullerton police, was in and out of treatment facilities after being diagnosed with schizophrenia 15 years earlier.

I hear that all the time — in and out of treatment. Thousands of people who fit that description wander the streets of Southern California.

But Marsha Temple, who runs the nonprofit Integrated Recovery Network, says it doesn’t have to be that way. A few years ago, Temple, an attorney who once represented hospitals, zeroed in on what she calls the “revolving door between Twin Towers and skid row.”

People would land in Los Angeles County Jail because of a crime committed due in large part to a mental illness, hang there for a while, then go back on the street, get into trouble again and land back in jail or prison. There was little chance of breaking the cycle because they were pretty much on their own, with no treatment plan and no one looking after them.

“It was shameful,” Temple said.

With public and private funding, her agency began connecting with clients while they were still in jail, steering them into therapy, medication and housing and then assigning caseworkers like Coley to check in with them regularly.

Temple’s staff now handles nearly 100 clients at a time. Since she began, she said, only 20% have gone back to jail — a success rate three or four times greater than estimates for those who get no such monitoring. The cost works out to roughly $10,000 per client per year, which is far less than the cost of churning people through hospitals and the criminal justice system.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called recovery network a model program.

“It provides intensive wraparound services, helping with substance abuse issues, mental illness, employment and social skills training, walking people through the system and seeing to it that they do not fail. And they don’t let go. They don’t cut their clients loose once a program is complete or a problem appears to be solved,” Ridley-Thomas said.

No one can say whether Kelly Thomas might be alive if he were a client in such a program. As his father told me, Thomas often resisted help, and it can be difficult for family or even professionals to break through to someone who doesn’t want treatment, medication or even housing.

But you just keep going back to people like that, Coley told me, and try to develop a trust that will pay off eventually.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors should take note. They responded to the Kelly Thomas tragedy by vowing to look into implementing a controversial state provision, known as Laura’s Law, that allows for forced outpatient treatment.

There’s no doubt some people need to be ordered by the courts into treatment for their own health and safety, and Los Angeles County makes some use of Laura’s Law. But there wouldn’t be as great a need for forced treatment — which is no sure-fire approach, and can be as traumatic as it is helpful — if there were adequate intervention, supportive housing and other services to keep people from deteriorating in the first place.

The supervisors would be better off investigating why, despite having the second-highest population of chronically homeless people in California, Orange County has fallen way behind on its 2009 plan to use available Proposition 63 funds for the construction of 185 supportive housing units by 2012. Or they could take a close look at Temple’s program and try the same thing in Orange County.

The day I spent with Coley was typical for him. He was so busy that the transfer of the woman from jail to housing would have to wait. And after a long delay at the County Jail, it turned out that Coley’s desperately ill client had been moved to another facility.

In the courtroom where the day began, his 19-year-old client, a woman with bipolar disorder, showed up and was congratulated by Coley, the city attorney and the commissioner. She had completed a 120-day stretch in transitional housing and therapy, rather than jail, for a minor crime.

Coley did not let her leave until she told him her plans, and he promised to make a follow-up visit within a week.

The guy who had been drunk was still tipsy when we arrived at the board-and-care home where he lives.

“Why were you drinking?” Coley asked the man, who has multiple mental disorders and has made several suicide attempts.

“Because I’m alone and my life is sad,” said the client, who wrapped his arms around Coley and thanked his caseworker for being his savior.

L.A. County inmate charged with beating cellmate to death

L.A. County inmate charged with beating cellmate to death
The 21-year-old had been ordered transferred to a state facility for the mentally ill, but had not yet been moved. The victim was a transient, 55, being held on suspicion of vandalism.

By Richard Winton

September 10, 2009

A Los Angeles County jail inmate was charged with murder Wednesday in the beating death of his cellmate, authorities said.

Matthew Rochelle, 21, allegedly attacked Cedric Walton, 57, on Aug. 31 in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Twin Towers jail, which often houses inmates with mental health or medical issues, prosecutors said.

“It was a beating death. One inmate basically killing his cellmate with blunt-force trauma,” said sheriff’s homicide Lt. Liam Gallagher.

At the time of the assault, Rochelle was being held on charges of burglary and resisting arrest, authorities said. He was arrested last winter by Los Angeles police in South L.A., court and jail records show.

Rochelle’s burglary case had been delayed twice.

According to court records and sheriff’s officials, Rochelle was due to be sent to Patton State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill in San Bernardino County. “It is unclear why he had not been moved,” Gallagher said.

The slaying occurred about 11:30 a.m. Aug. 31 in a two-person cell inside an area where inmates are observed for mental health issues, sheriff’s officials said. Deputies are required to check the cells on the ward every 15 minutes. Walton’s body was found by a staff doctor nine minutes after the cell was checked by a deputy, authorities said.

“All the checks were made on the inmates. Everything was done appropriately in this case,” said Steve Whitmore, the sheriff’s spokesman.

Since 2000, at least 15 people have been killed in L.A. County jails.

Michael Gennaco, head of the county’s Office of Independent Review, said his office and the Sheriff’s Department were reviewing the circumstances of Walton’s death, including whether the inmates were appropriately housed and classified.

“The victim was much older than his cellmate,” Gennaco said. According to officials, Walton was a transient being held on suspicion of vandalism.

Walton’s killing came two days after two inmates at the Men’s Central Jail killed themselves, authorities said. One man hung himself with a pair of socks and another housed in a medical area hung himself from a shower rod with a piece of clothing, Gennaco said.

20 LA County Inmates Infected With Swine Flu

Jul 22, 2009 10:52 pm US/Pacific
20 LA County Inmates Infected With Swine Flu
LOS ANGELES (AP) ―

Authorities say 20 inmates in the Los Angeles County Jail system have contracted the swine flu.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said Wednesday that the first confirmed case was reported about two weeks ago at the downtown Men’s Central Jail.

He said most of the infected inmates are housed at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic. At that facility, about 190 inmates were placed in two quarantine housing areas, where they will be tested and monitored over a seven-day period.

Two inmates were taken to outside hospitals for treatment.

About 20,000 inmates are in the county jail system.

Bail Bond Process

1-877-279-1999

Call 24 hours a day for immediate assistance.

If a friend or family member has been arrested and sent to any Los Angeles County Jail you can call us to begin making arrangements for their release immediately. Most bails can usually be done over the phone and fax machine for your convenience. It is helpful if you have the defendants name, birth date, and city where they have been arrested. If you don’t have this information not to worry we will investigate it for you.

To execute a bail bond at Twin Towers we will also help you with the following:

* Locate your loved one in the facility
* Determine co-signers and collateral if needed
* Bail bond forms completed (fax or in person)
* Secure payment (Cash-Credit Card-Check)

We can usually process the paperwork and have a bail bonds agent post the bond with in an hour. Sometimes there can be delays in the booking process or failures in the information systems of the jails that can delay the process. We pride ourselves in making it as quick and painless as possible, as we know how stressful the situation can be.

Bail Premiums

Bail premiums (costs) are regulated by the state of California and are non-negotiable. The cost of a bail bond is 10% of the bail amount. So if the defendant has a 10,000 bail the premium would be $1,000, and is non-refundable once the defendant is released. We do offer a 20% discount to union members, active military and attorney referrals as we have secured special permission by the state to offer this unique discount to those who qualify. Each bail agency is regulated by the State of California and is obligated by these pricing standards. We are one of the few companies that offer any kind of discount to union members and military personal.

Bail Bond Release Procedure

Once the paperwork and payment has been completed we will then go to the Men’s Central Jail where your loved one is at and post bail. Most jails in Los Angeles take between 2-4 hours to process the paperwork necessary for the defendant to be released. The Men’s Central Jail can sometimes take as long as 2-24 hours for a defendant to be released.

We will let you know and keep you up to date on expected release times. The facilities in LA County are extremely overcrowded and tend to be slow in their processing procedures. This is the busiest jail in the United States.

Please be advised that we do everything in our power, and use all our connections to make the process go as smoothly as possible for each of our clients. Just understand that their are some things out of our control.

We have included for your convenience phone numbers, maps, and driving directions to the Men’s Central Jail in the right sidebar. Please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with location and procedures of the facility.