Carbon County is hoping that a grant will help address some mental health issues within the county’s justice system.

On Thursday, the board of commissioners approved the submission of a grant application for funding from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency for a mental health initiative, crisis management and pretrial diversion. The funds being sought, $109,827, would be used to support salaries for a part-time social worker/case manager and a psychologist to perform evaluations.

Attorney Paul Levy, the chief public defender, said that from his experiences since 1996, mental health issues have always been a major problem with clients.

He said that of all the prisons nationwide, 24% of inmates suffer from some type of mental health issue.

The grant would help Carbon County’s public defenders’ office, as well as several other court offices, to get some help early on for offenders going through the court process.

The two positions would help identify and work with offenders to provide resources for mental health issues.

Levy said he would have liked the social worker position to be a full-time position and has a request in for it in the 2022 budget.

The social worker would also provide training to police and emergency responders to identify mental health issues in offenders.

“I can name at least a half dozen of my clients that are in the jail right now that could have used that and benefited from that,” Levy said.

“The social worker will be able to enable us to get them to the locations that they need to.”

The commissioners were on board with the request.

“I feel this is something that was always needed,” said Commissioner Rocky Ahner.

“I mean we’re always looking at the big word recidivism, and we’re people that are in the prison that shouldn’t be there … but I think people shouldn’t think this is just a get out of jail free card. It’s going to save the county money because every day a prisoner is in jail, it is costing us like 100-some dollars a day.”