$409M hospital plan aims to ease jail mental health backlog in Georgia

“The Senate has heard from our sheriffs that their jails cannot remain the state’s mental health hospitals,” Senate Appropriations Chair Blake Tillery said. “This would be the first state hospital constructed since the 1960s for mental health purposes. It’s long overdue.”

Tillery said the investment would also help the state’s forensic backlog.

In a news conference Friday announcing the initiative, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said the issue is something that affected his former Senate district.

“Something that I heard many times as a senator myself representing Baldwin County where they had, at one time, probably the largest mental health facility in the state,” he said. “I know this issue has been paramount and been at the front for many, many years.”

Criminal justice advocate Christy Perez, who was incarcerated for 13 years after being convicted of charges related to sex work, said the hospital would be a step in the right direction.

“However, and I want to be unequivocal here, confinement as care is almost never a sufficient solution, and we should be cautious about framing institutional expansion as the primary answer to a public health crisis,” she said. “History explicitly shows that systems built under therapeutic language can drift toward containment rather than meaningful treatment, particularly for marginalized populations.”

Earlier this year, state officials, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys and independent auditors agreed that Georgia’s system had improved enough to warrant ending the formal oversight arrangement that had been in place for over 15 years.

A series of articles by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2007 found more than 100 patients had died in state psychiatric hospitals because of neglect, abuse and substandard medical care during the previous five years. The investigation led to a 2010 settlement agreement between Georgia officials and the Justice Department, with the state pledging to dramatically increase services for people with mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities.

Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman, who also serves as the president of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, said sometimes crimes are committed because someone has a severe mental illness and needs treatment, not incarceration.

“Sheriffs, firsthand, we’ve witnessed the profound challenges that many inmates within our correctional facilities face,” Freeman said. “They’re not just serving sentences, but they’re battling these mental health conditions, and they require specialized care and attention.”

The money for the hospital was proposed by the Senate for the amended fiscal year 2026 budget. The Senate version differs from the budgets proposed by Gov. Brian Kemp and the House. The change to the $43.2 billion budget would also have to be approved by the House and Kemp.

Law enforcement officials for years have said the closure of the inpatient mental institutions led to people cycling in and out of jail because they aren’t able to get adequate behavioral health care and supported housing. It’s also exacerbated the homeless population in Georgia.

Perez, the criminal justice advocate, said while the hospital might relieve pressure on local jails, more needs to be done.

“Sustainable reform requires upstream investment in community mental health services, supportive housing and diversion programs so that treatment does not begin only after incarceration, because once confinement becomes the default gateway to care, the risk is that the system becomes more administratively efficient without becoming more just,” she said.