Things are quiet on the TV news since we heard Lester Holt do his series “Justice for All” on NBC Nightly News in September 2019. No more word of criminal justice reform. Why? Did the problem go away?
No, the problem has definitely not gone away because the TV news shows us in abundance that murders still happen in spades, and their only solution is to incarcerate the perpetrators. We know that doesn’t work. They show us that every night. This is where SARDAA comes in. They recognize that there are people who have brain illness problems and, because they don’t receive any treatment, their problem gets worse to the point where the result is catastrophic. People die. According to Linda Stalters, CEO of SARDAA, “There are fewer murders by people with brain illness than people who ARE criminals. However, substance use disorder is also a brain illness. Most of the time it’s domestic, gang or theft related.”
SARDAA and I work together on educating the public about this. SARDAA is also working with the CDC and other organizations to reclassify schizophrenia and related disorders so that there will be more money for research and beds for treatment. As I quoted Alisa Roth, author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, several times before, “The country’s three largest providers of mental health care are not hospitals but jails” (LA County Jail, Cook County Jail, Riker’s Island).
Sometimes we are not able to stop a crime from happening, and people end up in jail. This is where my book comes in: Once they are in there, what do we do with them? My book gives answers. And it has been studied and documented that these things work, for example, the Prisoner Re-entry Institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC has researched education and mentoring and found that they work. I recommended these back in May 1998.