The state mental hospital cannot keep up with an unexpected surge in court-ordered competency evaluations for accused criminals, the Colorado Department of Human Services said Thursday in asking for relief from a long-standing lawsuit.

The department filed to invoke “special circumstances” in a case lodged against the state by Disability Law Colorado. State officials informed the advocacy group in a letter Thursday that the mental hospital cannot hold up its end of the settlement agreement, which requires jail inmates to receive mental health evaluations or treatment within 28 days of receiving paperwork from a judge.

The action means inmates whose mental competency is in question could sit longer behind bars as they await evaluation.

“These inmates are presumed innocent, being held in pretrial status, probably receiving little if any mental health care,” said Mark Ivandick, managing attorney for Disability Law Colorado, which first sued the state over the issue in 2012 and revived the case in 2016 when there was a backlog of 100 inmates not receiving timely evaluations. “They are just relegated to languishing in jail before they get admitted.”

The problem, said human services Chief Medical Officer Patrick Fox, is a major increase in court orders for mental health competency exams from judges across Colorado, particularly in the last two months. Competency evaluation orders were up 44 percent in May compared with May 2016. And orders for restoration — treatment with the aim of restoring a defendant’s mental health in order to face charges — were up 89 percent compared with a year ago.

Read the full story at The Denver Post.

A guard is reflected in a security mirror in the hallway at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo.

The Denver Post

A guard is reflected in a security mirror in the hallway at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo. (Helen H. Davis/ Denver Post File)

Helen H. Davis