Why focusing on mental health will decrease crime!
Have you noticed more street people lately? Wanderers, panhandlers, and even those bad musicians playing all over? (Careful there…I’m a musician and I always throw money into those open instrument cases, no matter how bad the musician!) How about the guy I saw yesterday sitting on a busy street wearing a top hat, dirty shirt, two different shoes, reading a battered paperback.
They come from a variety of places. I’ve seen an increase in the last ten years coming through our courtrooms.
For years, at the state and federal level, money was appropriated to care for the mentally ill people in our midst who didn’t have family or insurance to help. Room, board, and medical care were expensive, but provided a minimum safety net for poor, homeless, and mentally ill people.
All that changed with the cut-back of government support. Now, many of those people have become street people, wandering in search of food, a place to stay, and care.
As a criminal defense lawyer, I most often meet them in court–charged with a variety of low-level crimes. These people live between the jail, courthouse, workhouse, and the emergency room of the county medical center–at greater cost to us than the original programs.
I’m still shocked when clients readily agree to go to the workhouse for a few weeks–something us middle-class people would avoid at all costs–simply because the offender wanted a few good meals and a clean bed.
In Hennepin County (Minneapolis) in Minnesota, something good is happening for the street people and the taxpayers.
A specialty court called, Criminal Mental Health Court was established to funnel those criminals with mental health needs to resources that will help them break the cycle. When lower-level offenders who need mental health care are identified, they move to the new court. It is staffed by a understanding and progressive judge, Judge Richard Hopper, who can direct resources, penalties, and rehabilitation to each of the miscreants who appear before him.
The court has a psychiatrist, social workers, probation officers, prosecutors, and defense lawyers to make certain that all constitutional rights are upheld. The teams, led by Community Corrections speacialist Lori Swenson, cooperate to determine what plan should be followed to keep the criminal out of the system, become stabilized, and hopefully, become productive.
It’s a radical change from what’s happened for years: the offender pleads guilty, is sentenced to some days in a workhouse, no one addresses the mental health needs, and when released, the offender has few other choices (or, for some who are severely mentally ill, no other choices) but to go back to the streets and commit crimes.
Let’s look at the costs for a moment. Previous housing programs were expensive, I admit. But today, a low level criminal with mental health problems may come into court a few times a month after committing crimes. There’s the cost to all the victims, the cost of jails, courts, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, probation officers, and workhouses. These same people often use the county medical center as their primary care resource, which costs additional hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Criminal Mental Health Court has a centralized resource center where the judge can order the offender to participate in services. It’s hoped that with adequate and correct resources the mentally ill people who wander our streets may find help to change.
It looks promising–let’s hope it works as well as it’s been planned!
