For months, Marcus Cooper Longoria cycled between jail and the hospital as he struggled with addiction. Eventually, the cost of bail and medical bills piled up.
“I didn’t really need the ER,” the 33-year-old said. “I needed a place to detox and come down.”
That’s what he found at the Assessment and Intervention Center.
The city’s 24/7 facility, staffed by the Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health Center, assesses people for mental health and substance use disorders and refers them to long-term treatment. It also offers free food and a place to sleep.
Mayor Joe Hogsett has called the $14 million building the “flagship” of his criminal justice reforms. In 2017, Hogsett proposed the assessment center, built alongside a new jail in the Twin Aire neighborhood, as a solution to help people whose non-violent, low-level crimes are driven by a lack of resources or medical attention.
Police, the courts and hospitals can refer people to the AIC instead of putting them behind bars or in crowded emergency rooms. People can also check themselves in, and stays are voluntary.
“Ultimately, our desire is to stop the revolving door of justice,” Hogsett told reporters at a 2018 groundbreaking for the site.
He acknowledged that the city government can’t help everyone. But if the new facility could divert some residents, Hogsett said, “that will be a big change and save taxpayers a lot of money.”
During the 2024 budget cycle last year, though, Hogsett and the City-County Council cut $300,000 from the center’s budget because of underuse. Data from Eskenazi Health shows the center, which opened in December 2020, admitted about 7,600 people through last year.
That amounts to five admissions on average per day.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office emphasized that the recent budget cut will not impact services.
“If utilization changes,” spokesperson Emily Kaufmann wrote in a July 8 email, “the city will make sure the AIC has what it needs to do its lifechanging work.”
But, Mirror Indy has learned, this may be just the beginning of funding challenges.
After steep state budget slashes this year, the county’s top public health agency ended its annual financial support for the AIC, too.
The Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, which operates Eskenazi Health and the local public health department, had provided more than $23 million through 2025 to help with the AIC’s start-up and capital costs.
But that contract expired, HHC spokesperson Curt Brantingham said, and the health agency won’t renew it. The agency is still reeling from state lawmakers cutting millions that had been used to care for uninsured patients at Eskenazi Hospital.
These are some of the pressing issues Hogsett faces as he prepares to introduce a new budget this month.
Some advocates, meanwhile, say they aren’t surprised to learn about the challenges confronting the AIC. To them, the AIC represented a political maneuver — one that was overshadowed by the Democratic mayor’s plan to build a bigger jail.
‘Just another Band-Aid’
Everyone agrees the need for services is great in Indianapolis.
It’s a city where over 65% of residents with serious mental health conditions don’t receive treatment, and two to three people die from overdoses every day.
But when Hogett proposed the AIC as a solution, local advocates were skeptical. That’s because it was built next to the new jail.
“It was a false promise,” said Nick Greven, a Haughville resident who protested the project with the IDOC Watch, a prison abolition group. “Politicans say they’ll do mental health and crisis response, but those things get cut after the jail is expanded.”
The AIC has 60 beds, compared to the jail’s 3,000. On most nights at the center this year, a city spokesperson said, about 16 people used them.
Stephany Bedolla works with people living on the streets through Adult & Child Health, a community mental health center. The organization refers people to the AIC, though she said many clients avoid it because they said it feels like walking into another cell. During admission, Marion County sheriff’s deputies, who provide security, search people.
“The AIC was going to fail right off the jump because you just made a side jail,” Bedolla told Mirror Indy. “It wasn’t therapeutic, it’s just another Band-Aid that cost millions of dollars.”
She was among the advocates who pointed out that, while the assessment center has empty beds, the jail next door has started housing hundreds of immigrants detained by ICE. The federal government is paying the sheriff’s office a $75 per diem for each detainee.
The mayor, for his part, blamed fellow Democrat Sheriff Kerry Forestal for maintaining a contract that allows ICE to fill the jail. (In a prior statement to Mirror Indy, Forestal said he is upholding the law.)
“I would rather not use the jail to house individual ICE detainees,” Hogsett told Mirror Indy at a July 8 press conference.
But advocates said this was the logical conclusion of the jail’s expansion — and part of the mayor’s legacy: More people, whether ICE detainees or local inmates, are being locked up.
“The AIC was meant to pacify activists and community members,” said the Rev. Keion Jackson, an organizer with Live Free Indiana, a coalition trying to end mass incarceration. “The jail on the same campus is being used more. That shows us where your commitment is.”
Mental health court referrals
In the county’s mental health court, the AIC is successfully diverting some people away from jail.
People with cases that qualify are supervised through mental health or substance use treatment. If successful, the court may dismiss their charges or reduce jail time.
“We’ve got to get people back out into the community and re-engaged with services,” said Marion Superior Judge Amy Jones, who oversees the mental health court.
The AIC also is a great option, she said, when someone has just been released from jail and doesn’t have anywhere to go or needs placement in a 28-day recovery program.
But as a judge, Jones often sees people with mental health issues fall through the cracks: They have to choose to go to the center and keep up with treatment afterward. And there’s already a shortage of mental health providers across Indiana.
“The vast majority of people I see in the system are in the middle,” Jones said. “They’re not quite sick enough to need a commitment, but they’re way too sick to manage their health care on their own.”
The AIC helps people find care, apply for government assistance programs and provides transportation to appointments. But staff acknowledge that getting someone through the door is the first battle.
“You can’t force a change on somebody,” said Jennifer Cianelli, who works for Eskenazi Health as the site manager for the AIC.
In 2024, the public hospital system tracked about 3,500 total referrals to the AIC. About 2,400 of those people were admitted, while the other 1,100 never showed up. Once there, about 53% of clients were connected to recovery housing or a substance use program.
Walk-ins are still the most common way people come to the facility, Cianelli said. And for those with referrals from the mental health court, the journey to the AIC is quick because the buildings are housed on the same campus.
Out in the community, it’s a different story.
Police, ambulances don’t transport to AIC
City leaders promised different agencies would work together to divert people to the AIC. But on the ground, there are gaps.
The nearest hospital, Community East, is still about 4 miles away. And even if the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department offers the facility as an alternative to arrest, officers still do not transport people there.
“We give people the information, we order a ride-share for them and that’s about it,” said Sgt. Amanda Hibschman, an IMPD spokesperson. “It’s up to them to walk through the door.”
Ambulances haven’t been transporting people to the AIC, either.
Jay Chaudhary, the former director of the state Division of Mental Health and Addiction, said he’s seen models like the AIC fail when the systems around them don’t work together.
“Everybody from 911 dispatch to EMS to the sheriff to IMPD, they all need to be on the same page,” Chaudhary said. “I don’t know if they ever got there.”
Longoria, the Indy resident who has stayed at the AIC multiple times, knows how much he benefited from the center and wishes more people would get help there. But he wasn’t surprised to learn the facility isn’t being used often — especially because he only found out about it from a peer.
“During my active addiction, I went to Eskenazi and IU Health a lot,” Longoria said. “They never told me the AIC was an option. They just release you.”
Meanwhile, a new law now allows for Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services to receive payment from health insurance providers for driving people in an ambulance to behavioral health centers, not just hospitals.
“That is going to open the door for us to transport people to the AIC,” Indianapolis EMS chief Dan O’Donnell said in a July 8 interview with Mirror Indy.
But as of Aug. 4, the agency hasn’t taken anyone to the assessment center.
As for the mayor, Hogsett said during a July 8 press conference that the AIC remains a priority for his administration despite last year’s $300,000 cut.
“The services that Assessment and Intervention Center provide are just critical to the overall health and well-being of people in the city of Indianapolis,” he said.
Hogsett is scheduled to introduce his budget during a City-County Council meeting on Aug. 11.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Mirror Indy reporter Mary Claire Molloy covers health. Reach her at 317-721-7648 or email maryclaire.molloy@mirrorindy.org. Follow her on X @mcmolloy7.
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