Judges should not be the first line against mental illness.

That would actually be an improvement over the current situation where the first line is just a jail cell with an indefinite stay

About 400 people deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial are sitting in Colorado jail cells this week waiting for a bed in a state mental health hospital, some of them for longer than a year and many for misdemeanor offenses.

It’s a “human rights crisis” and an endless, expensive cycle that state lawmakers are trying to stop. Legislation that passed its first hearing 11-0 on Tuesday at the state Capitol would divert people accused of low-level crimes into mental health treatment instead of requiring them to be “restored to competency,” a process for which the waitlist is months long.

Eventually, it definitely would be nice if these people didn’t have to be run through the criminal justice system at all to get the treatment they need, but this is what generations of lawmakers who only ever wanted to do domestic spending for cops has left us with