The plight of mentally ill prisoners with arson charges, physical assault or sexual abuse charges is not being ignored by the mental health community or the criminal justice community.
There just are no easy answers.
In prison, their deeds are punished, but mental health rehabilitation is minimal at best. When they get out or are eligible for parole, offenders with these crimes on their records find it very difficult to get supported housing or residential mental health treatment.
The local organizations that typically provide housing for the mentally ill or offenders — Tabor Community Services, Community Services Group, The Lodge of Pennsylvania, Philhaven Behavioral Health Services, Justice and Mercy, Transition to Community — have no housing programs for mentally ill offenders with arson charges.
Jim LaGraffe, executive director of Keystone Residence of Lancaster, said his organization would evaluate a person on a case-by-case basis.
Transition to Community, a program designed to help reintegrate offenders into the community, and The Lodge would provide services but not housing, said executive director Adrian Rodriguez.
"The question comes back to ensuring the health and safety of other people he will live with," LaGraffe said.
Even Lancaster County's Probation and Parole's Special Offenders program, which provides intensive parole supervision, housing and job help and counseling for people with mental illness, is reluctant to serve them.
Their services are reserved for clients with "nonviolent offenses." Clients with arson charges would be considered on a case-by-case basis, said program director Kerri Martin, using the client's psychological information and the "totality of the circumstances."
People's opinions of what's needed to fill the hole in the services vary tremendously.
The Lancaster County Re-entry Management Organization, a collection of social services, faith-based organizations and agencies working together to reduce recidivism, has been trying to find a way to address the problem.
What is needed, said Valerie Case, a paralegal who serves on the RMO, is a halfway house that is locked-down at night and supervised during the day.
Vincent Guarini, warden at Lancaster County Prison, would like to have a county facility where mentally ill prisoners could be sent for rehabilitation.
Earlier this year, Jim Laughman, executive director of Lancaster County Office of Mental Health/Mental Retardation/Early Intervention, asked the state for money to build a treatment center specifically for clients with mental illness and history of arson.
It was a detailed proposal for a fire-resistant building that could have housed clients released from Wernersville State Hospital and eventually others giving them a transitional place to stay until they acclimate to the community.
The Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services rejected the proposal, Laughman said.
A facility just for arsonists, such as the one Laughman proposed, will not promote integration into the community, said Joan Erney, deputy secretary for OMHSAS. Plus, she said, housing people together who have a propensity for lighting fires could be counterproductive, instead of helpful. They need to be influenced by people who don't find arson acceptable.
In addition, she said, finding a community which would accept a facility like that is practically impossible.
OMHSAS is moving its emphasis from group homes to providing individual "safe, affordable and permanent housing in the community" for people with mental illness, said Erney.
"In the housing program, as well as in forensic, the key is that people need to have access to really good treatment … and support they need to be successful."
The job for Lancaster County's MH/MR/EI, said Erney, is to work together with the providers to find a solution for offenders with destructive or violent charges.
"They are obligated to explore it totally," said Erney.
The bottom line, Laughman said is that nobody has come up with an answer for this difficult population.
E-mail: lespenshade@lnpnews.com