Appropriate Care of the Mentally Ill:  Creating a Safety Net

Friday, March 4, 2016

12:00 p.m.

WPIC Auditorium

The Honorable John E. Wetzel

Secretary of Corrections

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Secretary Wetzel is nationally recognized for his expertise in the areas of staffing, vulnerability assessment, mentally ill offenders, and developing employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated offenders, population management, mitigating impacts on the families/children of incarcerated individuals and effecting system change.

He began his career as a corrections officer in 1989 in Lebanon County, PA and later served for nine years in positions in Berks County, PA.  In January 2002, he began his nine-year tenure as warden of the Franklin County, PA Jail. It was there where he was credited with leading an effort that resulted in the transformation of their correctional system. Under his leadership, Franklin County saw a 20% reduction in their population while the crime rate declined.  Franklin County was at the forefront of maximizing their correctional continuum to reduce reliance on incarceration while focusing on improving outcomes for offenders.  Under Secretary Wetzel’s leadership, they developed a day reporting center, established a jail industries program and initiated several programs targeting improved services for mentally ill offenders, not the least of which being a certified peer specialist program in 2006.  Secretary Wetzel was appointed to the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, by then-Governor Edward Rendell, as the board's corrections expert, where he subsequently led a change in the pardons process resulting in an increased production of the board while alleviating an elevated waiting time for applicants. 

Since his appointment in December 2010 as the secretary of corrections for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, John Wetzel has overseen the elimination of a 24-year average growth of 1,500 inmates per year, presiding over the first population reduction in PA in more than four decades. Additionally, he oversaw the restructuring of the community corrections system, the mental health system and a re-engineering of internal processes to yield a more efficient system of program delivery.

He is a member of Harvard’s Executive Session on Community Corrections, which is a joint project of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).  Consisting of 30 of the leading policymakers, practitioners and researchers from across the country, the intent is to shape the meaning and future of community corrections policy in the United States. The Executive Session will develop best practices and thinking for professionals across the public safety and criminal justice spectrum.  Secretary Wetzel also was selected as the vice chair of the Council of State Government’s Justice Center’s Executive Board.

Learning Objectives:   At the conclusion of this lecture, participants will be able to:

1.        Describe strategies such as cross systems mapping and training to treat people living with mental illness more appropriately in the community. 

2.        Discuss the impact of housing barriers for people living with mental illness once they leave the corrections system. 

3.        Describe career opportunities for psychology students and other health care professionals in the criminal justice and corrections systems.

Continuing Education Credit:  The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.  The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM.  Each physician should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.  Other health care professionals are awarded .15 continuing education units (CEUs), which are equal to 1.5 contact hours.  In accordance with Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education requirements on disclosure, information about relationships of presenters with commercial interests (if any) will be included in materials which will be distributed at the time of the conference.  WPIC is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education for psychologists.  WPIC maintains responsibility for this program and its contents.  This program is being offered for 1.5 continuing education credits.

For more information regarding this lecture, please contact Frances Patrick (email: patrickfm@upmc.edu; Telephone: 412-246-6787).

Please visit our web site at www.psychiatry.pitt.edu for more information on lectures and educational events sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry.