Atlanta, Georgia — On March 20, 2026, the Georgia Advocacy Office, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR), and White & Case LLC entered into an agreement with the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD) to significantly reduce the amount of time people living with severe mental illnesses or intellectual or developmental disabilities are held in jail pre-trial while awaiting court-ordered psychiatric evaluations and competency restoration services.

The longstanding and well-documented wait times have resulted in many people languishing in jail for months or years while their criminal cases grind to a halt because they need an evaluation or restoration services to determine if they can stand trial. Currently, people found incompetent to stand trial spend, on average, more than a year in jail awaiting restoration services.

The backlog has meant that people with serious mental illness or other disabilities have been forced to wait in jails ill-equipped to meet their treatment needs, resulting in worsening symptoms, increased risk of harm, and unnecessary strain on local jails, courts, and hospitals. Perhaps most troubling, the long wait times lead to people with psychiatric, intellectual, or developmental disabilities spending more time in jail than people who are not living with a disability. The agreement establishes concrete timelines, accountability measures if DBHDD fails to comply with the agreement, and requirements to coordinate with other state and local governments to ensure evaluations and restoration services are provided promptly. Ultimately, the agreement requires DBHDD to bring wait times for evaluations and restoration services down to no more than 30 days.

“For far too long, people have waited in jail without the evaluations and restoration services the law requires,” said Ruby Moore of Executive Director for the Georgia Advocacy Office. “This settlement formalizes a shared commitment to fixing those delays now, while recognizing that there is also a need for stronger community-based services that can keep people out of jail altogether.”

“Mental illness should not lead to more jail time. But for years, jails have served as de facto warehouses for people with psychiatric disabilities because we’re arresting them faster than we can treat them. This agreement is a critical step toward prioritizing treatment over incarceration and restoring dignity and due process for people with mental illness who are arrested swiftly and then stranded in jail simply because the system did not respond in time,” said Atteeyah Hollie, Deputy Director of the Southern Center of Human Rights.

The agreement is a significant step toward reducing competency evaluation and restoration jail wait times in Georgia. But it is not the only solution to bettering Georgia’s competency evaluation and restoration system. Priority must be given to expanding community-based mental health services to prevent people with behavioral health needs from entering the criminal legal system in the first place. Investments in crisis services, outpatient treatment, and diversion programs are essential to long-term, sustainable change.

Read the agreement.