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Keeping
an eye on the mentally ill
Arkansas will spend more than $3.5 million this
year to monitor potentially violent mental patients it has returned to
society, but it will ignore some of the most dangerous ones.
Until 1994, the state spent no money specifically
to track people who had committed criminal, even violent, acts but were
acquitted because of mental illness. Since then, the state has added programs,
spent millions of dollars and made plans to spend millions more to treat
and monitor a small number of people.
State studies
notification of victims
The man accused of writing the letter in 1992 was
charged with felony terroristic threatening, but he was acquitted because
of mental illness. Last month, a judge ordered more evaluation and treatment
at the Arkansas State Hospital.
Reger, a lawyer at Ozark Legal Services in Harrison,
would like to know when he'll be released from the State Hospital.
But there's no guarantee that she will.
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