LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A longtime psychologist says Nebraska has dismantled important mental health services over the last decade, effectively turning jails and prisons into the state’s biggest treatment centers.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln psychologist William Spaulding told a legislative committee Tuesday that a law designed to reduce dependence on state hospitals wasn’t properly implemented.

The 2004 law was intended to shift those patients into community settings, but Spaulding says the money to support those programs never materialized. A UNL psychiatric rehabilitation center also closed in 2009, and many highly trained experts who worked for the state left to take jobs with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Spaulding says Lincoln police reported a 60 percent increase in calls involving mental illness between 2004 and 2008.

Committee members are looking at prison reforms.