Advisory Committee on Mental Illness and the CourtsOur Mission A revolving door problem has developed in this country. Jails and prisons have become the de facto mental health system of our day. We must reverse this trend. Over the past few years, innovative diversion programs and other pioneering efforts across the nation have been successful in attacking this crisis. We must persevere to be able to provide community treatment for this population who were previously “warehoused,” but who now are slipping through the cracks of our safety nets. If not for altruistic reasons, this change is crucial in terms of the cost savings to the taxpayer. Mentally ill inmates require far more jail and prison resources due to treatment and crisis intervention. But this revolving door has other costs, too. Taxpayer dollars are paying for police officers to repeatedly arrest, transport and process mentally ill defendants, jail costs associated with treatment and crisis intervention, salaries of judges and court staff, prosecutors and defense attorneys, and many more hidden costs. The question becomes would we rather spend these dollars to keep mentally ill citizens homeless, revolving in and out of our criminal justice system, or would we rather spend these dollars to help them to become stable productive citizens? To address this problem, we have formed the Supreme Court of Ohio Advisory Committee on the Mental Illness and the Courts (ACMIC), chaired by Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton. The committee is made up of over 50 representatives from the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, Judges, law enforcement, mediation experts, housing and treatment providers, consumer advocacy groups, and other officials from across the state. The Advisory Committee is working to establish local task forces in each county to bring similar local representatives together to collaborate and work on the issues of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system. We encourage each county to start a mental health specialty docket to deal with the issues, but have also found that the collaboration that results when all these groups get together goes far beyond the courtroom. The Advisory Committee provides guidance, resources, materials and information to the local task forces. We provide role models of other successful mental health court dockets, encourage Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for the police officers who deal with the mentally ill, and pass on grant and other funding opportunities to the task forces. We strongly believe that by joining forces and working together, we can make a difference. Evelyn Lundberg Stratton is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio. To participate in the mental health initiative lead by Justice Stratton, please contact: |