Inmates with mental illness and substance addiction would be treated in a special facility in Hastings under a bill advanced from general file March 26.<\/p>\n
Introduced by Omaha Sen. Brad Ashford, LB999 initially was drafted to make administrative changes to Nebraska\u2019s criminal justice system to revise its focus from incarceration to transitioning offenders to re-enter the community.<\/p>\n
Hastings Sen. Les Seiler brought an amendment, adopted 30-0, which replaced a proposed Judiciary Committee amendment and became the bill.<\/p>\n
As amended, LB999 would authorize the state Department of Health and Human Services to study the feasibility of establishing a behavioral health center at the site of the former Hastings Regional Center. The department would provide the governor, by Dec. 15, a program statement that examines:
\n\u2022 long-term needs of mentally ill and substance addicted inmates;
\n\u2022 renovating or building facilities for up to 200 inmates at the center;
\n\u2022 criteria for inmates to be placed in the center;
\n\u2022 programs needed to provide mental health and substance abuse treatment; and
\n\u2022 estimated costs of building renovation, staffing, operation and a proposed project schedule.<\/p>\n
Ashford said the bill would address the challenges faced by the state Department of Correctional Services in rehabilitating mentally ill inmates for release back into the community<\/p>\n
\u201cFailure to treat mental illness \u2026 can have very dangerous repercussions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Seiler said Hastings is especially suited to host an inmate rehabilitation facility because it would be supported by the mental health staff at Mary Lanning Healthcare.<\/p>\n
Following adoption of the amended committee amendment, senators advanced the bill to select file on a 38-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inmates with mental illness and substance addiction would be treated in a special facility in Hastings under a bill advanced<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-15372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-brad-ashford"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15376,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15372\/revisions\/15376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}