For safer streets, treat mental illness before the crisis stage |
For safer streets, treat mental illness before the crisis stage
Earlier this month, a man stabbed five people at Penn Station in Manhattan, in what witnesses described as a random attack.
Last month, a 21-year-old man opened fire outside of the White House.
Two months before that, three people were randomly slashed at Manhattan’s Grand Central Station.
Last year, a man stabbed 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a train in North Carolina.
All of these situations all had one thing in common: someone with a criminal history and a mental illness. These attacks, occurring in shared public spaces, drive fear and uncertainty about public safety solutions. The outrage is understandable. But the knee-jerk questions — “Why were they let out?” “Why weren’t they locked up?” — are wrong. If you want change, you should be asking: “Why didn’t they get help?”
The pattern is consistent. A person with documented mental illness and a long history of criminal justice system involvement commits a violent act in public. The criminal record becomes the focal point. The untreated mental health crisis — the thing that preceded every arrest, every release, every tragedy — gets a paragraph at most, dismissed as an excuse rather than the underlying cause. Why are we focused on a feel-good band-aid approach that is ineffective, instead of an actual preventive solution?These questions have driven American criminal justice policy for decades and the answer has almost always been the same: punish more. Evidence........