NC lawmakers propose changes to help people with mental health struggles
North Carolina lawmakers have revealed some of the changes they want to make to the state’s involuntary commitment process following the fatal Charlotte stabbing of Iryna Zarutska.
The North Carolina House Select Committee on Involuntary Commitment and Public Safety reviewed a 42-page draft report on those changes at a Tuesday morning hearing.
The 22-person committee’s focus is to fix the revolving door of people who are involuntarily committed, released, and arrested again while facing mental health struggles. The panel was formed following 23-year-old Zarutska’s death in August.
She was stabbed aboard a Charlotte light rail train by a homeless man who eight months earlier told police that a “man-made material” was controlling him and that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Last week, DeCarlos Brown Jr.’s state public defender revealed in a motion that Brown had been found “incapable to proceed” to trial. That case and a federal criminal case are both still pending.
Now, after months of hearing from experts and looking to New York’s outpatient care for inspiration, the North Carolina committee wants to:
- Make sure the state’s Department of Health and Human Services and judicial systems communicate better. Currently, magistrates do not have access to people’s clinical records (even though the recently-passed “Iryna’s Law” instructs magistrates to consider previous involuntary commitments when setting bond conditions), and clinicians do not have access to patients’ criminal records.
- Amend current law that limits who can conduct involuntary commitment evaluations. The lawmakers want more people to be certified to conduct such exams.
- Allow involuntary commitment exams to be done online, from jail, to reduce transportation delays in getting a defendant evaluated.
- Properly staff mobile crisis teams with clinicians who can stabilize situations and evaluate whether someone needs to be committed.
The draft report is subject to change and has not yet been passed along to the full General Assembly. See the entire report below:
