New Medicaid expansion backed by Gov. Roy Cooper would strengthen mental health care and substance abuse services for inmates, the North Carolina governor said Friday.
Even though lawmakers have not yet approved the funding, Cooper’s Wednesday announcement on his administration’s plan to expand Medicaid on Oct. 1 now pressures the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to act, as the News & Observer reported this week.
Mentally-ill prisoners disproportionately experience mental or behavioral health issues and experts have said those in the jail population will especially benefit from expansion in North Carolina. Statewide, more than 600,000 people are expected to be eligible for the program and gain new health care coverage.
On Friday, Cooper was visiting Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office Summer Camp, held for the first time this year at the former Juvenile Detention Center in north Charlotte. Sheriff Garry McFadden stood alongside Cooper as kids wrapped up their third week in the “Escape Camp” by learning archery.
Asked about a case like Devalos Perkins’ — a 37-year-old Charlotte murder suspect who has been waiting more than 10 years in jail due to his mental health condition and a one-word loophole in state law — Cooper pointed to Medicaid expanding as part of a solution for a broken system.
“We know that we’ve underfunded our behavioral and mental health system significantly over the last few years,” Cooper said.
Earlier this month, The Charlotte Observer’s “Purgatory” — a four-part series about Perkins — revealed legal ambiguity and a one-word loophole in state law allows criminal defendants like him to wait years, and even more than a decade in some cases, to go to trial if they are deemed mentally-incapable of proceeding to trial.
“Our Department of Health and Human Services already has a program going on here in Charlotte-Mecklenburg to help restore