Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced the creation of a Mental Health and Diversion Bureau. The DA’s office will be referring what Teare called “nuisance” criminal cases to mental health service providers.
Teare announced the changes at a recent Houston Police community meeting.
“We are not stopping anything by prosecuting them and sending them to jail,” Teare said.
According to Teare, his office is working with Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and Harris Health on a plan to refer some individuals to mental health services instead of prosecuting them criminally.
“We are going to start emergency detention orders civilly. That gives me 72 hours to civilly apply for a 90-day commitment,” Teare explained. “If they don’t have a criminal case attached to them there are a number of mental health providers around the community that will take them.”
According to Teare, the Mental Health Bureau would improve the quality of life for citizens by focusing on referring cases of repetitive nuisance crime to mental health care providers.
Teare hopes 15 to 25 percent of offenders redirected to mental health services will receive the help needed to stop committing crimes, allowing police to focus on more serious offenders.
“These officers then have the time to go get the people we should and are all scared of instead of arresting the same person at the same gas station seven days in a row,” Teare said.
He also called the Harris County Jail a “humanitarian crisis” and promised his office would lower the jail population “one way or another.”
According to Teare, the county spends $54 million a year housing inmates in jails outside the county, because cases have not been processed in a timely manner.
Last month, Texas Scorecard reported that the Texas Commission on Jail Standards asked the Texas attorney general to help force the Harris County Jail to comply with state standards it has not met since 2022.
The DA also added that his prosecutors would be available to offer guidance to help officers collect evidence and charge people with the “correct crimes” to prosecute, thereby moving cases through the system more effectively.
Teare announced the creation of two additional bureaus in his office.
The Domestic Violence Bureau will take on all cases of intimate partner violence. Teare explained his office wanted to have experts working together to help victims with a prosecutor that specialized in this type of crime.
He announced plans to help citizens get needed protection orders by making the process more accessible.
A new Homicide Bureau will also be established to deploy prosecutors alongside homicide investigators to crime scenes and improve collaboration.
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