Complete Justice: Ending the Criminalization of Mental Illness

People with mental illnesses in the United States are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than hospitalized. In fact, seventy percent of individuals in jail in the United States have a serious mental illness, a substance use disorder, or both. After confronting the failures of our criminal justice system first-hand, Miami-Dade County (Florida) Judge Steven Leifman realized that for the system to improve, a radical change was necessary. In 2000, he created Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit...