Travis County Diversion Center Design to Begin in 2024

Phones in the existing Central Booking facility (Courtesy of Travis County Sheriff's Office)

Early next year, there will finally be some movement on Travis County's plan to build a diversion center to redirect people with mental illness away from jail and into treatment – and it's "a long time coming," says Travis County Judge Andy Brown. "We want to make sure we get this process right and set a standard in the state on how to address the mental health and substance use disorder crisis."

Last week, county staff told commissioners they will issue a request for qualifications to identify architectural and design firms that will do the site analysis on the property that the center will be built on and assist with operations planning. That will include programmatic changes to the way the county conducts booking, like instating a counsel at first appearance program, which advocates have long pushed for. The court has set aside $2 million for the project's first phase of construction, which will last a year, and the center is expected to be finished by mid-2030.

Co-located with a new Central Booking facility, the diversion center would provide a respite space for those recovering from a mental health crisis and a pathway into services and out of the jail. The plan has been in the works formally since March, when the Commissioners Court voted to authorize a pilot, but conversations around a growing mental health crisis in the Travis County Jail have stretched long before that. (In 2021, the court delayed a vote for a new women's jail in favor of reconsidering the county's long-term correctional plan to include more diversion.) At a county meeting last week, Sheriff Sally Hernandez pointed out that "today our jail population is higher than it's been in a long, long time, at 2,343 people," adding that the diversion center is important to the Travis County Sheriff's Office amid a full-blown staffing crisis, despite investments in pay and recruitment. Currently, the vacancy rate for corrections officers is 31%, 911 dispatchers is 19%, mental health counselors is 11%, and sheriff's deputies is 12%, according to TCSO.

At a town hall in June, Brown noted that of the people in jail with a mental health designation, the majority have been booked on misdemeanors, with the majority of those facing only criminal trespassing charges. The idea of the diversion center is that most of those with nonviolent offenses like trespassing could be diverted before arrest. The county has made several visits to successful examples of diversion centers around the country, including in Miami and Nashville, which have made significant progress in lowering their jail populations.

The center's design phase – which will follow guidelines set out in a Dell Medical School report on the county's forensic mental health system, released in March of this year – is estimated to take 18 months. Staff noted that the earlier they understand programmatic changes commissioners want to make, the better, as it will affect eligibility for grant funding. Commissioner Jeff Travillion brought up the possibility of folding in suicide prevention into the programming, as well as more preventative measures to help at-risk community members before they ever enter the criminal justice system.

Though details are still being worked out, "a partner-designed diversion program has the potential to benefit our community so much," Hernandez said, saying that a new Central Booking facility and diversion center will give law enforcement "options other than incarceration." Travillion urged that even though the project is sorely needed, "we want to make sure that [it] is managed effectively, rather than being rushed. I look forward to engaging my health advisory team and other trusted community partners in the Eastern Crescent as we move forward in addressing one of the most important issues confronting our region."