POULSBO — Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson estimates that about 40 percent of people in Kitsap County Jail have mental health issues.

The problem is, the county doesn’t have many tools to get them the help they need to stay out of jail.

“We know they’re there,” Erickson said, “we know there’s a problem. But our only real tool is the pre-trial diversion contracts, but nobody … helps people comply with them.

“There’s no help.”

That’s why Erickson and other public officials — including a prosecutor and a judge — have applied for a county grant to hire a behavioral health specialist to help people with mental health issues get the help they need.

Currently, the county offers pre-trial diversion contracts, which are agreements between the defendant, prosecutor and judge that the defendant will seek certain treatments and behave appropriately and get the help they may need in order to avoid jail time. But Erickson said that though there are people who check to make sure the requirements are being met, there’s no one connected to the municipal court to actively help those people with the process.

“Once these contracts are in place, this person has to complete these steps,” Erickson said. “Oftentimes, people with mental health concerns have trouble doing that.

“The behavioral health specialist would help them stay on their pathway to get help.”

Joe Roszak, chief executive officer of Kitsap Mental Health Services, said many people with mental health issues or substance use problems can be better served with treatment than jail, so they want “to provide a proactive service through this grant.”

“It’s not unusual (that) folks with severe mental illness are … unable to advocate for themselves,” Rozsak said. “Now they would have someone who could actually advocate on their behalf and help the individual navigate within the parameters of the legal system, and ideally get them to where they need to be to successfully move forward with treatment.”

No city money will be spent for this program.

One benefit of having the specialist in place, aside from keeping people out of jail, is that it should save the city money, Erickson said.

“What we have now is very expensive jails,” Erickson said, “and it costs about $90 a day to put somebody in jail. We spent almost $90,000, Poulsbo did, putting people in jail last year.”

This program is expected to cut down on that cost.

If they don’t receive the county grant, Erickson said they will investigate federal grants to fund the program, but she said federal grants usually come with more restrictions. A federal grant could mean more money spent on administering the program, leaving less for the program itself.

The specialist will be contracted out from Kitsap Mental Health Services and attached to the Poulsbo and Port Orchard municipal courts, where only minor offenses are tried. When pre-trial diversion agreements are appropriate, the specialist will be tasked with helping each person through it.

This is what Erickson called a “pilot program,” meaning it’s the first time it’s been done.

“It’s something that we don’t know if it’ll work, but we want to give it a try,” she said.

Erickson worked with the new county prosecutor Kylie Purves and the director of Kitsap Mental Health, Joe Roszak, among other people, to work out the particulars of the program and apply for the county grant.

The grant they applied for comes from the one tenth of 1 percent of county funding to mental health, and Erickson said that, from her understanding, their application has been recommended for funding, though they don’t know for sure yet. However, the grant cycle starts June 1, Erickson said, so they’ll know soon.

She said they’re already in the process of writing up job descriptions and preparing to start the hiring process, because she wants to have the specialist hired and in place by the end of June.

“It’s not just good enough to put people in jail,” Erickson said. “We need to find some ways to keep them out of jail and to help them with whatever’s troubling them.

“If we can find a tool that will actually help them, get them into some kind of medical help that they need that is a much better way to go.

“It’s better for them and it’s cheaper for us.”