Miami-Dade County Judge Steve Leifman has just stepped down from the bench after 30 years. He鈥檚 internationally known for developing major reforms of how the criminal justice system deals with people who have mental illnesses; he鈥檚 even been honored by Pope Francis.
Leifman says his career has coincided exactly with the de-institutionalization of people with mental illnesses, 48 years ago. At that time, most people with mental illnesses were in institutional care, such as in a psychiatric hospital. Leifman was a 17-year-old legislative intern, sent to look into a constituent鈥檚 complaint about the way her son was being treated in institutional care.
鈥淎nd I find Jonathan and he is in a bed with all four-point restraints. And he鈥檚 probably 100, 150 pounds overweight from the Thorazine that they are injecting him with. And he鈥檚 screaming and crying and carrying on and moaning. Out of a horror movie. And it was way before HIPPA, so I asked to see his files, like I knew what I was looking at or for. So I鈥檓 going through this stuff and trying to figure out what the hell it meant. I had no idea, except something caught my eye. And I talked to the staff, and I said, 鈥楨xcuse me, what鈥檚 this? It says that he鈥檚 autistic.鈥� He wasn鈥檛 even psychotic 鈥� he was autistic!鈥�
Jonathan ended up getting proper treatment, says Leifman, but when the institutional care facilities began releasing people to the community for services, the criminal justice system wasn鈥檛 ready for it.
鈥淓veryone realized we had a problem. Everyone realized it was wrong. It wasn鈥檛 political, it wasn鈥檛 D or R, it wasn鈥檛 law enforcement versus PD [public defender] 鈥� it was great. What we recognized was that we were all so busy doing our job 鈥� judges judging, prosecutors prosecuting, defenders defending, police policing 鈥� nobody was responsible for the system that was allowing these poor people to cycle in and out of every acute care system in our community at great expense and at great harm to these poor individuals.鈥�
The Miami-Dade Criminal Mental Health Project found that on average, people with mental illnesses remain incarcerated four to eight times longer than people without mental illnesses arrested for the exact same charge, at a cost seven times higher.
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In 2000, Leifman helped develop a training program that teaches law enforcement officers to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental illnesses. That鈥檚 the pre-arrest piece of the Criminal Mental Health Project.
鈥淲e set up a treatment program for our police here because for all the obvious reasons, they do not want to go to get treatment at their departments. You know, the stigma, losing their jobs [or] promotion -- all of that good stuff. You know, last year more police died from suicide than in the line of duty. It鈥檚 terrible. And so, the woman that runs my CIT program -- that鈥檚 our Police Crisis Intervention Team Police Program -- she gets 150 to 250 calls a month from police officers for their own personal mental health issues.
鈥淎nd so we set up a treatment program where we鈥檒l get them treated outside their department with the permission of all the police chiefs. And we don鈥檛 have to report it unless they鈥檙e suicidal or homicidal. And so they love it, and it has played a significant role. You can draw a straight line down from the five years before we started CIT to now where the police shootings have almost stopped. It鈥檚 really remarkable. And that was something we had not even anticipated. It was just a wonderful ancillary benefit of doing the right thing for the right reason. And then, it turns out, it saved the city of Miami hundreds of millions of dollars.鈥�
The post-arrest piece of the project diverts people with mental illnesses to treatment centers, rather than locking them up.
鈥淪o if you get arrested now, we have a whole new screening system. If you meet criteria for our program and you鈥檙e willing to take treatment, we get you out of jail and we get you into a full treatment system. And if you meet criteria for the Baker Act on a misdemeanor, we usually get you out within a few days of your arrest. We try not to order as many psychological evaluations because they鈥檙e a waste of time, but instead try to get you treated. And if you successfully complete our program, which most do, we drop the charges anyway and you don鈥檛 have a record.鈥�
With this in place, Leifman says, recidivism for Miami-Dade鈥檚 misdemeanor population went from 75% to 20%. And recidivism among its felony population went from 75% to 6%.
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And now, with the administrative responsibilities of a judge behind him, Leifman is free to devote himself to taking his reforms to other states and other nations.
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