Laura sits in a holding cell in the cold, grey basement of Waterbury’s Superior Courthouse, digging her face into the 1970s fly collar of a tan coat, three sizes too big.

“I don’t want to go back,” she says, tears streaking her dry cheeks. “I won’t.”

Laura—scared, frustrated and confused—is a child in a 24-year-old woman’s body. With a mess of kinky black hair, huge dark eyes and the chipmunk features of a girl who hasn’t yet shed her baby fat, it’s easy to forget she’s not a child, but a grown woman with an IQ of 61.

Laura is handcuffed. (At the request of her state-appointed guardian, we’ve used only Laura’s first name.) Her ankles are shackled above her pink and white, lace-less sneakers. Her hands shake and her legs bounce as she twists in her chair—swatting at tears with her joined wrists. She was picked up on a domestic disturbance call in June and has been held at Connecticut’s women’s prison, York Correctional Institution in Niantic, since then. It’s been over six months.

During that time, Laura’s been injected with medication to “calm her;” experienced four-point restraints that shackle her—spread eagle—at all four limbs; and been under the suicide watch called Q15, where she’s checked every 15 minutes, day and night, to ensure she’s alive. Nobody—not the prosecutor, the judge nor the prison—seems to believe she should be there. But there’s nowhere else for her to go. A critical shortage of supportive housing for people like Laura has kept her behind bars.

“What’s happening is the Correctional Department is being used as a holding facility,” says James McGaughey of the Office of Protection and Advocacy, the independent state agency that advocates for the rights of the disabled. “People realize that if they send this woman out onto the streets she could get into all sorts of trouble.” But neither Connecticut’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services nor the Department of Disability Services (formerly the Department of Mental Retardation) have taken responsibility for Laura.

Because the Department of Correction doesn’t distinguish between mentally retarded inmates like Laura and those who suffer from schizophrenia, brain injuries and drug addiction (all are lumped into the “Mental Health Three” category in DOC’s internal census), it’s not clear how many mentally retarded adults are incarcerated, says McGaughey. But, based on his knowledge of the DDS caseload, McGaughey estimates that the number is around 200. DDS is “aware of” 15 to 18 individuals currently in DOC custody, says spokeswoman Joan Barnish.

Laura is not alone, and neither is Connecticut. The vulnerability and need that once landed the mentally ill and retarded in prison–like hospitals now places them in another, even harsher institutional setting: the jails and prisons of the country’s criminal justice system. The de-institutionalization movement, which sought to bring people like Laura out of isolation and into their communities, was never fully realized. A half-finished liberation movement, it “liberated” the mentally impaired onto the streets and into homeless shelters. Ultimately, it liberated them into squad cars, ill-equipped “correctional” institutions and the courtrooms of stumped judges—far more restrictive environments than the hospitals from which they were freed.

Decades after this incomplete project began, Laura’s trapped in the sort of absurdist Catch–22 for which the mental health bureaucracies have become famous. She was arrested in Connecticut so soon after leaving New York that Connecticut was reluctant to recognize her as a resident. But New York wouldn’t take her back. Even after DDS finally accepted Laura as a client, she’s remained behind bars because, her advocates say, the state cannot guarantee a suitable bed for her.

Laura’s public defender, Thomas Nalband, declined to accept a plea agreement that would have allowed her to be released because he doesn’t believe she could survive on the streets. “Nobody is stepping up,” says Nalband.

After aging out of New York’s notoriously dysfunctional foster care system, Laura spent several years at a group home for mentally-impaired adults. In June, her sister checked Laura out and brought her to Waterbury. Nalband believes her sister was after money, though that couldn’t be confirmed. (Laura’s guardian, attorney Hillary Horrocks, would only say that Laura’s disability checks were “being sent to a party in Waterbury.”) Only a week into Laura’s stay, her sister called the police, saying Laura had attacked her and threatened her with a knife. Laura was arrested on three counts of breach of peace, threatening and reckless endangerment. Laura’s sister could not be reached for comment.

Nalband dismisses Laura’s offenses as both unlikely and irrelevant. Even if Laura, who Nalband describes as “like a precocious 8-year-old, on a good day,” did fly into hysterics and wield a knife as her sister claimed, her behavior wasn’t criminal, says Nalband. It was the behavior of a severely impaired woman, recently displaced from the only stable home she’d known as an adult, acting out. “If this was a violent person, she would have a violent history out of New York,” he says. “She wouldn’t just come to Connecticut and turn into a knife–wielding maniac at 24 years old.”

Assistant State’s Attorney Corinne L. Klatt confirms that her office offered a plea agreement in the case that would have freed Laura from jail. But simply dropping the charges and sending Laura on her way isn’t an option. For Klatt, it’s important that Laura plead guilty, even if she’s released. “Someone with mental health issues is going to be a repeat offender,” says Klatt. “I have to protect the State of Connecticut.” Nalband says the judge in the case won’t accept a plea without being assured that Laura has somewhere to go. “You would literally just be dumping someone who’s the equivalent of a four- or five-year-old onto the street” when it’s 25 degrees outside, says Nalband.

Laura’s first application to DDS was rejected. Nalband says that he was asked for a lease or utility bill in Laura’s name, to prove her Connecticut residency, but because she’s never lived independently, she had neither. Even after Laura’s residency and disability were documented through records from New York, DDS was reluctant to get take on Laura’s case. Horrocks describes a call to DDS after she was appointed guardian in August as “not a productive conversation.” Nalband says he was told, “Just because she’s retarded in New York doesn’t mean she’s retarded in Connecticut.” It’s common for DDS to be unresponsive to clients who are referred to the agency through the criminal justice system, according to McGaughey. They’re overburdened by their existing caseload.

Citing federal medical privacy laws, DDS would not confirm or deny Laura’s status as a client, and Barnish would only say that DDS has “a limited statutory role in criminal justice system regarding competency.” McGaughey says that DDS views its involvement in the criminal cases of mentally retarded adults in terms of what they are legally required to do. DDS evaluates “whether the department has to provide services or not,” says McGaughey, and “if they don’t, they won’t.”

Laura was finally approved as a DDS client in November and, according to Horrocks, was placed on an “emergency” housing placement list.

“They found her eligible for services,” says McGaughey, who has followed Laura’s case, “but that doesn’t guarantee that she’s going to get them.” As of Sept. 30, there were 51 people on DDS’s emergency waiting list, according to Barnish. Generally, she says, emergency applicants are “in immediate risk of serious harm if they do not receive residential support, services or placement.”

Placement time “ranges from ‘immediate’ to several months,” writes Barnish, via email.

Because DDS can’t guarantee they’ll be able to help Laura should her criminal case get resolved, her best hope is being found incompetent to stand trial. Remarkably, the Office of Court Evaluations, the state entity charged with determining one’s competency, found Laura competent after her first evaluation. Nalband hired an independent evaluator, who disagreed with the office’s findings. Now a three-person panel is assessing Laura again.

On Jan. 17, a judge will hear their testimony and make a decision. If Laura is found incompetent, she will automatically be placed at Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown, the state’s last remaining mental hospital.

But even that may not be the end of it, says McGaughey. A person found incompetent to stand trial is not necessarily off the hook. Often, their case is simply set aside until they become competent. In the case of mentally retarded adults, this often means they are trained to answer a series of questions about their case and the role of the attorney, the judge and prosecutor. They’re no more able to understand their situation, says McGaughey—they simply repeat what they’ve learned.

“With all this talk of whether we need to build more prisons,” says McGaughey, “we really need to focus on moving people out of jail who don’t need to be there. Well, here’s a group that doesn’t need to be there.”

fmoon@newhavenadvocate.com