By mid-May local leaders should better know how many prisoners in the Douglas County Jail have mental illnesses, and how many could be better treated without housing them in costly jail cells.

A crowd of about 40 people at the Douglas County Courthouse on Monday evening were told that a detailed research project is underway, and that by this summer a report will be delivered on the type of prisoners currently being served at the jail. Then, the project will shift into the phase of starting to find solutions, which could include a multimillion-dollar expansion of the county jail.

“But this issue goes well beyond the county jail,” Douglas County Commissioner Jim Flory told the crowd. “We’re looking at this as a community issue.”

Members of the crowd asked the County Commission and the Sheriff’s Department to consider issues such as employment programs, transitional housing, substance abuse treatment and several other programs that could help jail prisoners more easily re-enter society, or keep them out of jail in the first place.

“Employment and housing are the keys to recovery,” said Rick Cagan, executive director of the Kansas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “This community needs to make investments in those paths to recovery.”

Sheriff Ken McGovern said he agrees that any solution needs to be broad-based.

“I give the county commissioners a lot of kudos,” McGovern said. “I was focused on building a jail, and they said ‘time out.’ They said we need to look at the whole process, and I agree.”

The jail, though, is facing some space issues. When the jail was built in 1999, female inmate populations weren’t as large as they are today. The current jail has only 24 beds for female inmates out of the 186 beds total. On Monday, the county was paying for nine female prisoners to stay in jails in other counties because the female section of the facility was at capacity.

McGovern said the county is going to look at a variety of models in communities that have worked to reduce inmate populations. Communities have tried a variety of ideas, including: special mental health courts that allow mentally ill defendants to receive diversions and treatments rather than jail time; special crisis intervention training for law enforcement officers; and greater partnerships between law enforcement, mental health providers and the judicial system.

“There is not one community or agency in the country that is doing everything completely right,” McGovern said. “But there are a lot of communities out there doing a lot of good things, and it is our job to find those ideas and bring them back here.”

Monday’s meeting was the first of five to six public forums the county plans to host on issues surrounding the county jail and mental health care. Several members of the crowd said they were pleased with the early steps the county has taken.

“I think for a long time we have been trying to apply a legal remedy to a health problem, and we’re starting to say ‘that is not working,'” said Brian Blevins, director of the Lawrence Community Shelter.

The county has said any solution to improve the jail and improve mental health care in the county could cost $20 million to $30 million. It hasn’t yet proposed a plan to pay for any future project.

The county tentatively has set a date of May 18 for the next public forum on the issue. At that point, the Sheriff’s Department expects to have more data to present about the current situation at the jail.