You Won’t Believe How Florida Spends 1/3 of it’s Mental Health Budget
In the Florida Bar News a new story points out an astonishing fact about how Florida’s state government spends it money. Florida spends one-third of its total budget for mental health care, about $210 million, on trying to make 2,500 competent enough to stand trial.
Florida is spending a third of the money allocated for mental health programs on trying to get mentally incompetent people well enough so it can try and convict them of crimes.
A third.
Florida is already the at the bottom of states for funding mental healthcare services. By some estimates we are 49th out of 50 states in funding mental health services per capita.
And, to cap things off, we spend an outrageous amount of money just on trying to convict mentally ill people.