Texas Commission on Jail Standards Suicide/Mental Health Screening Form

The Commission on Jail Standards has implemented a new suicide/mental health screening form for use in all county jails. The new form is still one page and has been updated to remove awkward questions, to add questions intended to identify mental retardation, and to clean up portions of the form following feedback from the jails.
The Jail Mental Disability/Suicide Intake Screening form was traditionally used only to identify inmates who might be suicidal in order to increase supervision of those inmates and reduce liability to the counties. The form was later expanded to screen for mental disabilities so that those inmates may be housed in a way necessary to ensure their safe confinement.
The Commission on Jail Standards received information from jail officials that some parts of the screening form were not helpful to some counties. For example, one of the questions asked on the old form was, “What season is it?” This prompted answers from some inmates ranging from deer season to football season.
The agency asked the Texas Correctional Office on Offenders with Medical or Mental Impairments to review the form, and a subcommittee was formed. The subcommittee included members of state agencies, a district judge, a district attorney, a county sheriff, a forensic psychiatrist, and others in the mental health and criminal justice fields. Several county jails of all sizes were visited by subcommittee members in order to observe how the form was used, and jail officers were interviewed for their comments on what they liked and disliked about the form. All the information gathered was used by the subcommittee in developing a new form, which was then submitted to the Commission on Jail Standards. The Commission on Jail Standards approved the new form and mailed copies to all sheriffs and private detention facilities under their purview on June 22.
Since mailing the new form, the Commission on Jail Standards has received several calls from jails with questions about the form. The most commonly asked question was about the removal of the question that asked whether or not a CARE check (sending inmates’ information to the Department of State Health Services for cross-reference against the statewide MHMR client database) had been completed on the new inmate. This question was removed on the new form due to feedback from jail officers. The form is filled out immediately on each arrestee as they are brought into the jail. Most often, CARE checks are not done until the end of the day or sometime later when information on all booked inmates for that day is submitted to the local MHMR center. This left jail officers in a situation to prematurely mark that the a CARE check had been completed, or go back after all inmate information had been submitted and mark that the checks had been completed after pulling each inmate file. This question was removed, and jail inspectors will now ask for any documentation showing that CARE checks had been completed at the time of inspection (i.e. copies of fax, email, etc.). If jails still wish to note the completion of the CARE check on the form, they are free to do so in the comment area, and this is acceptable as documentation of submission as well.
Several jails have put questions from the screening form into their computerized booking and intake software, and inmates’ responses to the questions are entered directly into the computer. For these counties, the new form means that they will have to update their software to add the new questions. The Commission on Jail Standards has been contacted by several software vendors on this issue and has been working with them to update the software. For now, jail inspectors will be allowing jails using computerized entry systems to continue using their existing systems until software updates can be applied. These jails will have a couple of months to get their systems updated and begin using the new questions. For jails using paper copies of the form, the new form has been made available on the Commission on Jail Standards Web site, and these jails should begin using the new form as soon as possible.
Any and all questions regarding the suicide/mental health screening form should be directed to Jonathan Hortman, research specialist with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, at 512-463-5505.