By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Saying what's available now isn't working, state lawmakers voted Tuesday to be able to lock up those suspected of being impaired on drugs for up to five days without their consent.
Kevin Daily of the Tucson Crime Free Coalition told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee that area residents and businesses are beset by people who are stealing, bathing on front lawns and having sex in public.
"Our members are suffering,'' he said. And Daily said one potential solution would be longer involuntary commitment which he said could help break the cycle of addiction he believes is behind a lot of the problem.
The question now for lawmakers is how long should the state be allowed to hold someone for substance abuse disorder.
Dr. Marjorie Balfour, a Tucson psychiatrist, told lawmakers there was an effort last year to allow someone to be held for a full year.
"The science doesn't support that,'' she said, and the bill went nowhere.
By contrast, Balfour said this focuses on people already being picked up by law enforcement using existing public health laws for being at risk of harming themselves or others. They then are being brought to the Crisis Response Center in Tucson, which is run by her employer, Connections Health Solutions.
That results in an evaluation to determine whether their problem is due to mental health or substance abuse.
"But under our current statute, after that first 24 hours, if it seems like the behavior is driven mostly by substance abuse, which in this case is primarily meth, if they don't want to stay then we have to discharge them back out to the street, even if they're still impaired,'' she said.
SB 1257, approved by the panel on a 8-2 vote, is different.
What's in the bill, Balfour said, is allow a crisis center to keep someone for up to five days to allow whatever they are taking to clear from the system, "give us time to engage with them with peer support, try to enhance their motivation for treatment, so hopefully they would accept involuntary treatment.''
Sylvia Lee, a former Pima County supervisor, said the change makes sense.
She pointed out that at one time the policy was to lock up people believed to be suffering from mental health problems for long periods of time. All that changed she said "as the pendulum swung way over here'' as states were ordered to stop warehousing people.
Lee called SB 1257 "one tool to put it back in the middle.''
While what's behind the proposal are problems in Pima County, the change would have statewide effect, allowing those five-day evaluations anywhere in Arizona.
Not everyone thinks it's a good idea.
"I really empathize with everything everyone's been saying about helping people get more treatment,'' testified Jeanne Woodbury. And she told lawmakers she understands the issue being "a sober person in recovery.''
But Woodbury said her clients, the Arizona Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, the latter an association of criminal defense lawyers, believe that locking people up for a longer period of time without their consent is not a solution.
At least part of the problem, she said, is that some of those caught up in this actually may be mentally ill. And Woodbury said locking them up solely because of that could run afoul of a settlement of a decades-long lawsuit which prohibits the state from locking people up without plans and funding for actually helping them.
Nor does she see this as a solution.
"So this is something where we're going to be putting the state in a very difficult position, legally and financially, and potentially putting people in a revolving door of five- to 10-day periods of evaluation and commitment where forced detox does not really lead to long-term recovery,'' Woodbury said.
She got an argument from Sen. Vince Leach who is the sponsor of SB 1257.
"Is your degree in psychiatry, in treating patients like this ?'' he asked.
Woodbury acknowledged her degree is in mathematics. But she said she was representing the views of his clients "and using their expertise.''
Leach responded that the current situation is unacceptable.
"Right now, we're in a two-day revolving door,'' said Leach, a Republican who lives in southern Pinal County but whose district includes parts of Tucson. "Is that trying to fix people?''
"Neither of these are good solutions to help people,'' Woodbury responded.
But she said that locking people up for five days has ripple effects and can affect whether individuals can hang onto their housing and their jobs, something Woodbury said "can be much more destabilizing.''
That answer did not satisfy Leach.
"We've got businessmen that are spending $1,500 like monthly fixing doors to their businesses,'' he asked. "What is the ACLU solution?''
Woodbury said her purpose in testifying was to point out flaws in the measure. That drew an angry reaction from Leach.
"I would ask that he answer the question and not what he's here for,'' the senator said.
Woodbury said the problems are more complex.
"I think that at the root of a lot of these issues is poverty,'' she said.
"We need more solutions to make sure people have housing and access to health care so that it is easier for them to maintain voluntary treatment,'' Woodbury said. "From my own experiences in residential care, one of the most difficult things for people to actually maintain recovery is that they cannot afford to be in treatment for long enough without losing their housing and employment.''
Leach told his colleagues they should ignore all that.
"A majority of these people are on the street,'' he said. "This is not a residential problem.''
The measure now needs Senate approval.
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