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New data compiled by the Oregon Judicial Department shows signs that recidivism has risen following the controversial 2022 policy decision to release mentally ill criminal defendants early from Oregon State Hospital.
The policy was enacted to reduce the waitlist for scarce beds at the state psychiatric facility which treats criminal defendants deemed too unwell to stand trial. But, the judges argue, not only has the policy failed to eliminate the waitlist—it’s created new problems of its own.
The number of new felony cases filed against defendants who’d been discharged in the last six months increased 46% since the policy was implemented in the summer of 2022. For misdemeanors: 90%. (As a comparison, the overall number of new felonies filed statewide dropped in 2023.)
“Those increases, in a word, are alarming,” wrote a lawyer representing three Oregon circuit court judges who presented the data in a legal brief filed on Friday. The judges are serving as advisors in a two-decade-old dispute in federal court over how to eliminate the waitlist, which results in the warehousing of sick criminal defendants in jails.
The Oregon Health Authority is disputing some of their claims, the judges say. A spokesperson for OHA said on Friday she could not immediately comment.
Regardless, the judges are unmoved. “The judges analyzed OHA’s data and remained confident that OJD’s numbers were both correct and/or the most analytically significant,” their brief notes.
The judges—Multnomah County’s Nan Waller, Benton County’s Matthew Donohue, and Tillamook County’s Jonathan Hill—have long been critical of the early-release policy, a compromise that was brokered by an external expert and ratified by a federal judge. Among many other issues, the judges have long emphasized the public safety implications of a policy that drastically cut the amount of time spent trying to restore criminal defendants to sanity so that they could ultimately face trial.
Following the order, the judges say, the number of people released from the hospital still too ill to stand trial doubled, a fact the judges found “deeply troubling.”
And, as a result, charges have been dropped against over 500 criminal defendants, including four accused murderers, the judges say.
Despite it all, the judges note, the new policy has ultimately failed in its goal of eliminating the waitlist. As of October, there were 85 people waiting for a bed.
Their brief concludes with a plea for more state funding to address the problem. “Too much time has passed, too little ground has been gained (and, even then, lost), and the consequences to everyone involved—and public health and safety as well—are too great to accept progress measured in years and a collection of studies and informational legislative hearings.”