Twenty-one years after its inception, Miami-Dade County’s Criminal Mental Health Project (CMHP) is still active, helping divert thousands of people that suffer from serious mental illness (SMI) away from jail and towards treatment. The CMHP is a national model regarding the decriminalization of mental illness, and other counties are encouraged to follow in Miami-Dade County’s footsteps.
Despite its proven success, however, Miami-Dade County and the State of Florida is still falling behind regarding mental health funding and behavioral health investment. The CMHP suffices as a starting point to help those suffering from mental illness, but more action needs to be taken to have a more significant impact in our communities.
About the CMHP
The CMHP serves a range of criminal defendants, including those who are non-violent and diagnosed with SMI, have simultaneous SMI and substance abuse disorders, and have been booked for less-serious felonies and other charges.
There are two components to the CMHP: (1) pre-booking diversion consisting of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training for police officers and (2) post-booking diversion serving individuals booked into the jail and awaiting adjudication. All participants are provided with individualized transition planning. This includes linkages to community-based treatment and support services.
Upon agreeing to enter the voluntary project, defendants with SMI are referred to a mental health care provider. The mental health care provider, along with the court and other social service agencies, work together to coordinate and create a treatment plan that would best suit the individual with SMI. If the individual follows the treatment plan for six months to about a year, their criminal charges are reduced or dropped, all while obtaining access to the necessary mental health care that they wouldn’t have been able to acquire on their own.
The CMHP strives to eliminate gaps in services for people who have SMI and forge relationships between mental health care providers, law enforcement officers, the court, and people who suffer from SMI.
What works
Daily inmate numbers have reduced from about 7,000 to 4,000 as a result of the CMHP, and the number of shootings and injuries of people with mental illness has significantly dropped. Miami-Dade County even closed a jail facility, which saved taxpayers over $12 million per year.
The Miami Model has helped other counties and cities recognize that some behaviors that lead to criminal charges are caused by unmet mental health needs rather than criminal intent. Rather than add to the stigmas of mental illness and criminalization, the Miami Model offers a different solution: to meet the mental health needs of its citizens and train officers to respond to calls with mental health training under their belt. Criminal justice reform and decriminalization regarding non-violent offenders who suffer from SMI are necessary for the welfare of communities as a whole.
What needs improvement
The Miami-Dade County jail currently serves as the largest psychiatric facility in the State of Florida. In fact, Florida jails have been dubbed “the asylums of the new millennium,” and this terminology is by no means a stretch of the imagination. Jails and prisons have replaced mental hospitals in Florida. This is becoming common in communities throughout the country.
Florida policy leaders have acknowledged the need for investment in mental health, but not much has changed in terms of funding and investment since the CMHP was first implemented. Florida is consistently ranked 48th, 49th, and 50th nationwide regarding access to mental health care. Moreover, Florida’s per capita funding for mental health ranks last in the nation.
Citizens of Florida have to endure months-long (and sometimes years-long) waiting lists for intensive services, children and adults being referred hours from home for in-patient care or basic counseling, fighting with insurance for coverage, and accepting that some will not be able to access the mental health care that they need.
Miami-Dade County, for example, is home to the largest percentage of people with SMI of any community in the United States. Fewer than 13% of these individuals receive public mental health care.
Law enforcement and correctional officers in Miami (and the rest of Florida) are usually the only responders to people in crisis due to untreated mental illness. While the CMHP has trained over 5,000 law enforcement officers with 40 hours of crisis-intervention training, unnecessary shootings and arrests continue. In Tamarac, Florida, for example, deputies from the Broward Sheriff’s Office fatally shot a mentally-ill patient, Jarvis Randall, at a mental health facility 12 times, just hours after Randall had learned about his father’s death. There were no attempts to deescalate the situation and no licensed therapist or psychiatrist was called. In North Miami, a police officer shot behavioral therapist and caregiver Charles Kinsey, who was de-escalating a crisis involving a man with severe autism.
What can you do?
While the CMHP isn’t perfect, its success is still worth noting, and other cities should look to Miami as a guide to improve the welfare of its citizens, particularly those with SMI. There are plenty of ways that citizens can get involved without being a part of the legal or criminal justice system.
Be Informed
Accessibility.com’s goal is to promote accessibility and equal access for all, including those who suffer from SMI. For more information, head over to our Resources tab, where you can access our blog, glossary, interviews, and more. Learn what mental illness is, how it impacts the lives of those around us, and why there still isn’t equal access to mental health care for Americans.
Get Involved
Once you have learned more about the mental health crisis and the lack of equal access that millions of Americans face, you can get involved and advocate for those who need it most.
- Volunteer with organizations such as Community Reach Center.
- Help others take a mental-health screening to see where they’re at.
- Learn and practice person-centered language.
- Promote organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which has a helpline and resources for people with mental health conditions.
AccessibilityPlus 2022
Accessibility.com is proud of our role in promoting accessibility and equal access while recognizing there is much work to be done. As we welcome a new year in 2022, we have opened registration for AccessibilityPlus 2022, which will feature monthly events dedicated to promoting actionable solutions in implementing accessibility initiatives. Registration is limited. For more information about the conference, speakers, and topics, please visit our AccessibilityPlus registration page.
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