A Reporter's perspective

SALT LAKE CITY -- After covering the Brian David Mitchell trial and hearing all of the experts testify that he did in fact suffer from a mental illness, I became interested in what would happen to Mitchell once he was sentenced and sent to prison. None of the jury members I interviewed after the verdict was reached disputed his mental illness, but they thought he knew the difference between right and wrong when he kidnapped Elizabeth Smart.

Certainly there are different levels of mental illness, but I wondered could his crime have been prevented long before it occurred, if he had received the mental attention he needed prior? It was a question I sought the answer to.

I researched this issue, I found police come in contact almost daily with the mentally ill while out on calls. If a mentally ill person commits a crime and is arrested, it's difficult to mix them in with the general jail population. If they are sentenced to prison, they are separated from the rest of the inmates as well, and locked up in the Olympus Facility.

This is a building that was originally intended to house female inmates, but because of the high demand with mentally ill inmates, it has never been used for that. It's an isolated facility that looks similar to other prison buildings I have been in, except the feeling there is different. As I was led through the u-shape on a tour of the different units, I felt a pit grow in my stomach as I looked at the cells. They have special metal barriers on the food slots so inmates cannot throw food or fecal matter at the correctional officers. It was quiet—eerily so—except for the faint noise of an inmate I could see through his cell window pacing and talking to himself. An officer checks on the inmates every 15 minutes, to make sure they aren't harming themselves or their cells. As I walked through, I couldn't help but feel compassion and empathy for these prisoners, some of which I'm told are so severely mentally ill, they will spend the rest of their lives here.

And there is the zinger. They are severely mentally ill, yet they are in prison—not in a mental hospital. Why is that? Yes, they committed a crime and they are serving their time. But as the new Salt Lake County District Attorney told me, he believes somewhere along the lines, the system failed them. The emphasis is on public safety and protection, which is extremely important, but cuts are continually made to mental health and substance abuse treatment. Gill insists prevention and education are the keys to keeping the mentally ill out of jails and prisons.

He threw out some statistics that shocked me. Gill said the largest mental health facility in the country is not a hospital, it is the LA County Jail. Number two, he said, is Riker's Island. Number three is the Cook County Jail. He said you have to go down to numbers 13 or 14 until you find a publicly funded and accessible mental health facility.

Those numbers are grim, but there are some glimmers of progress. Currently there is a resolution before the state legislature that would encourage law enforcement officers across the state to participate in Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) to learn how to deal with the mentally ill. Mental Health Courts are beginning to take shape in several counties, and treatment organizations like Valley Mental Health are working hard to keep tabs on the patients they serve.

However the mental health administrator at the prison, who has been there for 29 years, told me he is a realist. Dale Schipaanboord says the legislature's focus is often on the tail end—public safety, rather on stopping a crime before it happens.

Those are some of my thoughts on covering this story. I would love to hear yours. Please join me on Facebook.

Thank you for watching.

E-mail: jstagg@ksl.com