Crazy train

Over the weekend, a laughing, seemingly deranged man chucked metal rail-tie plates onto subway tracks, derailing a train. The alleged saboteur, Demetrius Harvard, had 18 prior arrests, including one for smashing bus windows earlier this month. Harvard also “had lots of mental issues,” a family friend told the Daily News.

It’s unclear whether Harvard ever needed or sought treatment; it is unclear whether anyone ever tried to invoke Kendra’s Law, which allows courts to order individuals with serious mental illness who are a danger to themselves or others to stay in treatment for up to a year.

But if he winds up in prison for the senseless destruction he’s accused of, it will be cruel irony. Because in New York’s frayed and failing mental health care system, jails and prisons are often the only places someone struggling with severe psychological problems can get help.

The decades-long dismantling of New York’s inpatient psychiatric treatment facilities didn’t make the most debilitating forms of mental illness magically disappear. And it certainly hasn’t saved New York any money.

In fact, a new IBO report shows that health-care costs in New York City’s jails have swelled, from $197 million 10 years ago to nearly $347 million in 2020, despite the jail population falling almost 60% over the decade,. The jail population may be smaller, but the share of that population with a mental health diagnosis has grown, from 29% to 48%.

A majority of the new costs were for substance abuse disorder services and mental health treatment.

Any system that essentially requires someone struggling with mental illness to go to jail to get treatment is inhumane. But that is the system New York has. Shame on us all.