Kennebec County's Co-Occurring Disorders Court is a good thing -- but it's unfortunate that we need it.

The court provides a chance for inmates facing long-term sentences to redeem themselves and avoid prison. These aren't just any inmates facing prison; they're the ones suffering from "co-occurring disorders" or multiple psychological problems, including mental illness and drug or alcohol abuse. That subgroup of inmates is, disturbingly, getting bigger every year -- here and in other states.

The court program, pioneered by Justice Nancy Mills and District Attorney Evert Fowle, requires participants to plead guilty, report to the judge every week, work at a regular job, volunteer in the community or study for a high school or college degree and attend counseling and other programs. They also must make restitution to their victims and any child-support payments required.

Admission to the program is tightly controlled -- no one guilty of a sex crime or murder is allowed into it, and Fowle says applicants must demonstrate they've taken responsibility for their crime.

Only six people have been able to complete the rigorous program so far, with several others on their way.

What's good is that the program is one way to retrieve some almost-lost souls from the brink, where their lives would be virtually wasted in prison. With intensive su-pervision, rock-hard standards and treatment geared to re-integrating participants into society, the program represents a thoughtful -- but not softhearted -- last-ditch attempt to help people.

If successful, the program also accomplishes another goal: It keeps inmates with mental illness out of jail, where their presence can cause significant stress to staff (because of suicide threats and other disruptive behavior, for example).

But the court shouldn't be necessary.

In an ideal world, those suffering from schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorder, drug and alcohol addiction and other mental-health problems would get their services from an efficiently run mental-health system whose programs were accessible to all who needed them.

That's not the world we live in.

In the interim report of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which was formed in 2001 to address problems in the country's current mental health system, members concluded that "... the mental health delivery system is fragmented and in disarray ... lead[ing] to unnecessary and costly disability, homelessness, school failure and incarceration."

That's borne out by the presence in the criminal justice system of many people with mental illness. According to a 2002 report by the Council of State and Local Governments, "people with mental illness are falling through the cracks of this country's social safety net and are landing in the criminal justice system at an alarming rate."

The percentage of Maine's incarcerated population suffering from several mental illnesses has been estimated at between 35 percent and almost 70 percent -- a huge range, but even at its lowest, that's a lot of people whose untreated illnesses may signi-ficantly contribute to their anti-social and ultimately cri-minal behavior.

And so they end up in front of Jus-tice Mills pleading guilty in order to get mental health treatment.

We commend Mills and Fowle for their responsiveness in setting up this court. They're dealing at the back end with the failures of a system that needs fixing at the front end. Their efforts have substantively helped prisoners with mental illness on the verge of being locked up and the key thrown away.

Yet we would caution those advocating for the establishment of more county co-occurring disorder courts to think twice. The actual effectiveness of the program in Kennebec County needs to be evaluated over a multi-year timeline, which means money will need to be allocated to follow the fortunes of those who have graduated from the program.

Second, given that such a court is a response to a mental-health system that isn't working, we'd hope that the state's limited resources would be spent on improving and reforming the system so that it can help those with severe mental illnesses before they end up in the criminal justice system.

Otherwise, we may very well end up in the situation where the police arrest someone not to send them to jail, but to get them mental-health services. There's something very wrong with that.