Courtesy Dave Thompson, Prairie Public Radio

JAMESTOWN, N.D. (Prairie Public) – The Legislature’s interim Acute Psychiatric Treatment Committee is recommending the construction of a new State Hospital.

The new hospital will stay in Jamestown. But its location could be moved.

Right now, it shares grounds with the James River Correctional Center. And the Committee chairman – Rugby Republican Representative Jon Nelson – says at the end of the 2021 Legislative Session, there was talk of moving it to the area of the Jamestown Regional Medical Center and the Anne Carlson Center.

But, Nelson says the state Department of Corrections makes a compelling case for the need for treatment at the JRCC.

And Nelson says if the state Hospital would stay at the same campus, it would be moved away from the JRCC.

Nelson also says that – even though the committee was appointed specifically to look at the state Hospital, it expanded its role, to look at treatment needs across the state, including more community-based treatment.