When it comes to how the state deals with involuntary mental health commitments, it’s system is “severely broken,” Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi told the County Board earlier this week.

Her comments were in response to County Board Chairman Tim Gabrielson’s question after her report on the county jail population.

She reported on Tuesday that 73 people were incarcerated in the jail, with 11 of them being women, and the daily average population between Aug. 25 and Sept. 25 was 61 inmates, with seven to 10 being women. That average was down a bit, Amazi said.

“Are there any that are staying longer than they should be?” Gabrielson asked.

“Longer than they should be for the mental commits? Yes.” Amazi answered. “That state system is severely broken, severely broken.”

“That costs us a ton of money ….,” Gabrielson began to say.

“They don’t belong in custody,” the sheriff said. “Their behaviors suggest that they don’t belong in custody, but we’re having to deal with them anyway. So today, right now, I have a deputy on the road, he left at, I believe, 4 in the morning to go to Fargo to pick one up to bring to the (Community Behavioral Health Hospital) in Fergus Falls. That’s what we have to do. And it’s a mental commit, so we’re finding him an initial bed and then we have to move him from there.”

“Bed” is shorthand used by officials to refer to an opening in patient capacity at a mental health facility.

“This is another thing the state has put on us to do,” Gabrielson said.

“Oh yes, yes,” Amazi said.

Mower County Attorney Kristen Nelsen joined in to explain how the person wound up in Fargo in the first place. Austin’s facilities didn’t want the person or were full, so the county had to turn elsewhere.

“Then the nearest place we’re shipping them is Fargo,” Nelsen said. “These are people who have just gone for help or been taken for help to our hospital and then it’s Fargo. So this isn’t a court system, this is an overall broken system.”

“We do our hearings by interactive television, but then there comes the point that when they’re committed they have to be put back into a bed in our system, which means somebody has to go get them and bring them somewhere,” Nelsen added.

The causes for commitments vary from mental illness people are born with to drug-related psychosis, Amazi said.

“We are seeing an increase in those that are drug-related,” Amazi said.

There are closer facilities than Fargo’s.

“They used to go to General in Rochester,” Nelsen said. “Now they go to Prairie St. John’s in Fargo or they go to Hibbing or Duluth, or they go to Willmar. Willmar is the best we can hope for.”

“Rochester has one but they’re always full,” Amazi said.