Diversion

To be clear, we are not talking about people who have committed serious felonies. That is another discussion. But the large majority of people who are involved with the criminal justice system are charged with fairly minor offenses -- what may be labeled disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, shoplifting or other petty theft, maybe getting in a fight or vandalizing property of someone they ' re mad at. As we have seen, a lot of these people have diagnosable mental and/or substance use disorder, limited education and job skills.  As we have also seen, if they are convicted (or more realistically, coerced into pleading guilty), and sentenced, whether that includes incarceration or just probation, their chances of getting a job, acquiring job skills, and getting the help they need just get worse. And what should be obvious, but somehow seems not to be for a lot of people, they ' re going to be back on the streets pretty quickly, so if you ' re worried about them committing more crimes, a criminal sentence is just going to increase that likelihood, not reduce it.  What makes more sense depends on the individual ' s needs. I ' m not going to talk about someone in the category of Jordan Neely, who had what we call a Serious and Persistent Mental Illness, in his case diagnosed as schizophrenia. He was arrested multiple times and had been incarcerated, which obviously didn ' t help matters at all. He needed more intensive services in a stru...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs