The impact of a state hospital closure on local jails: the Kansas experience.

In 1990, Kansas's Mental Health Reform legislation began transferring fiscal support for the delivery of mental health services away from state institutions and into the local community, culminating in the closure of one state hospital facility in 1997. Kansas jails were studied to determine the resulting impact of that hospital closure on the State's jail systems, including whether an increase in incarceration rates of persons with severe and persistent mental illnesses followed the closure of the hospital. Though a relationship between the hospital closure and incarceration rates cannot be substantiated, the results do provide a rare birds-eye view of the extent of and problems associated with the incarceration of persons with mental illness in a predominantly rural state.