Rome’s mental health court due in January; Judge Jack Niedrach to outline new service Oct. 6 during Mental Illness Awareness Week.

By Sarah O’Carroll for Hometown Headlines

Superior Court Judge Jack Niedrach will outline an adult mental health court expected to begin accepting participants in January during a speech at Trinity United Methodist Church in Rome beginning at 7 p.m. on Oct. 6.

A candle-lighting ceremony will follow Niedrach’s speech, according to Jim Moore, president of Rome’s National Alliance on Mental Illness, who is coordinating Mental Illness Awareness Week activities for the week Oct. 4-10.

The awareness week will conclude with a NAMI Walk at Heritage Park beginning at noon on Saturday, Oct. 10. Moore says walk day also will feature live music and a “Best Dressed Pet” contest with prizes. Moore’s goals are 400 participants and $50,000 raised to help the organization expand programs in Rome and Northwest Georgia.

Rome’s mental health court is the one of the newest courts of a growing state network of “accountability” courts aimed at veterans, drug or DUI offenders and the mentally ill. The accountability court program was created to provide alternatives to incarcerating non-violent offenders, as well to reduce the state’s prison population, according to the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council website.

Niedrach is the judge responsible for Rome’s grant-funded mental health court, one of 24 such courts in the state funded for fiscal year 2016, according to the Council of Accountability Court Judges of Georgia. Also funded are 12 veterans courts and 47 adult drug courts.

“I’m excited about this,” Niedrach says. “One aspect of it is saving state money but the other side is to address mental illness in a better approach in order to provide better assistance.”

Floyd County received a $114,000 state grant to establish the mental health court, according to Niedrach. The court will hold sessions once per week, with capacity for 12 to 25 participants, he says.

Participants will be determined based on the risk they pose of re-offending and on the severity of their mental illness, he says, factors to be determined as part of a referral process administered by representatives from Rome’s district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office, sheriff’s office and the probation office.

“We deal with [persons with mental illnesses] all the time,” Niedrach says. “This is a new model that will require the system to treat them better.”

Most participants with mental illnesses have committed non-serious criminal offences, such as trespassing, simple battery or drug possession, according to Niedrach. The mental health court is intended to “address these crimes in a more effective way” than by simply incarcerating people, he says.

The funding grant is part of the Georgia Accountability Court Program established by the Georgia state legislature in 2012, Neidrach says.