Judge Steven Leifman has led the fight in Miami-Dade, Florida's Eleventh Judicial Circuit to keep individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) out of the criminal justice system.
How?
By helping them treat their mental illness.
Listening to NPR's Scott Simon's interview with Judge Leifman about the upcoming PBS documentary, "The Definition of Insanity," featuring Judge Leifman's work, I was struck by the following key points (please know some of these are not exact quotes -- listen to the interview before citing):
- About 40% of all people with serious mental illness (SMI) – e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression -- at some point in their lives are going to come into contact with the [U.S.] criminal justice system.
- [In the U.S.] about 400,000 people with serious mental illnesses are behind bars either in jail or prison and another 800,000 are under some type of correctional supervision.
- What we [Criminal Mental Health Project (CMHP)] recognized is that this population is no more dangerous than the general population. Many of these people can lead really good, healthy lives with the proper treatment. The recovery rate for people with these illnesses are actually better than those of people with heart disease and diabetes – they’re just not getting access to treatment.
- So, we put together a summit in 2000 of all the traditional and nontraditional stakeholders (e.g., prosecutors, defense attorneys, persons involved within the criminal justice system) the outcome of which was the CMHP.
- When you have someone there because of a mental illness, the only thing we’re dealing with is whether or not they committed a crime, but nothing is done to address their underlying mental illness, which is contributing to their arrest.
- Initially we started with only non-violent misdemeanor cases (quality of life offenses, like urinating in public, trespassing) and within a year recidivism, rates dropped so significantly, we were able to show the prosecutors that by getting people treatment we were going to get much better results.
- Overall, recidivism rates are now about 20% in the misdemeanor cases and 25% in the nonviolent felony cases, which is down from about 70%.
- What we are doing now for the last group, who’ve been so sick for too long – people on the streets for a long time without treatment – we’re in the process of building the first-of-its-kind mental health diversion facility. It will have all the elements of what you need to treat this population in one place — “a medical home.”
- When we ask what’s causing their behavior, we can get a significantly different outcome – it allows us to help them change their behavior by giving them the help they need.
About the Film, "The Definition of Insanity"
Shocked by how people with mental illness were treated in Miami-Dade's jails, Judge Steve Leifman works with a team of dedicated public servants, as well as former adversaries in the criminal justice system, to help people with mental illness navigate from lives of tragedy to possibility.
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