Advocates at a mental health summit in Birmingham today called for a $68 million investment in Alabama's mental health system and mandatory training for police officers to reduce incarceration for people with mental illness.

The Mental Health Summit was held at the Wynfrey Hotel (Hyatt Regency) in Hoover.

Jimmy Walsh, president of National Alliance on Mental Illness Alabama, said state leaders need to restore $35 million cut after 2009, increase funds to catch up with inflation and add up to 400 community-based beds to reduce wait times at state psychiatric facilities.

"If we have a whole cohort of people not getting medication, guess where they're being treated?" Walsh asked. "In jail, which costs money. In the hospital, which costs money."

After Alabama cut its mental health budget, the state closed psychiatric hospitals in Mobile, Montgomery and Decatur. Since then, the size of the waiting lists at the remaining state hospitals in Tuscaloosa have drastically increased, leading to backlogs in local hospitals and long waits in the community for people experiencing mental health crisis.

The lack of treatment beds has created problems for law enforcement agencies. Officers without access to mental health beds may take mentally ill people to jail instead.

Alabama's mental health system is currently under the microscope in a pair of separate lawsuits. A federal lawsuit in Montgomery alleges inadequate psychiatric treatment for inmates with mental illness - leading to a spike in suicides last year. That trial is underway. Another lawsuit filed in 2016 against the Alabama Department of Mental Health claims long waits in jail for people deemed not guilty by reason of insanity violate the Constitution.

Mental Health Commissioner Jim Perdue wants his department to take over psychiatric care in state prisons, which is currently provided by contractor MHM Services, Inc.

"Mental health serves people from the day they are diagnosed to the day they die," Perdue said. "The fact that they are in prison is an inconvenience."

Perdue said the state has not created enough community-based services to make up for the closure of state hospitals.

"When you close facilities and don't provide the opportunities in the community, then jails and prisons became the de facto facilities," Perdue said. "We need to change that."

Mental health advocates in Alabama have been trying to bring Crisis Intervention Training to the state since 1990, but until recently, the state was one of just a few with no departments certified by the Tennessee organization that developed the program.

Leaders from the National Alliance for Mental Illness Alabama drafted legislation to require the training, and the bill will be sponsored by Rep. Mike Ball (R-Madison).

Major Sam Cochran, founder of Crisis Intervention Training and a former Memphis police officer, said training is just one part of the model. In Alabama, state law needs to change to allow officers to determine which cases need mental health intervention, he said. Officers also need to have access to facilities that can evaluate and treat people in crisis. Birmingham has a crisis center, but it isn't open at night.

"Officers try to redirect people from the county jail to the county mental health system," Cochran said. "If you're saying, 'What system?' You have some serious challenges."

Walsh said $24 million of the money requested would fund hundreds of beds in the community, which could include 24-hour crisis centers similar to those found in other communities including Memphis.

Judge Steven Leifman of Miami, who has led efforts to keep mentally ill people out of jail, said many communities have experienced increases in the jail population since the closure of state psychiatric hospitals.

"Since 1980, the number of people going to jail has tripled, and their sentences have increased by 160 percent," Leifman said. "Much of this increase is due to mental illness."

At the height of the mental health crisis, local governments spent $400,000 a day to house people in the Miami area with mental illness in the county jail, Leifman said.

Author Pete Earley spoke about his son's experiences with mental illness, which led to criminal charges for breaking and entering. After six years and several frustrating encounters with the mental health care system in Virginia, his son recovered from severe bipolar disorder after an encounter with a police officer trained in crisis intervention.

"Police officers see more people in a day with severe mental illness than doctors do," Earley said. "Why are we asking our police and judges and courts to figure out what is a community public health problem?"