Up to one in four incarcerations should be prevented: local collaborations working to keep NVOs with behavioral health problems out of jail.(JUSTICE SYSTEM)

"At least half a million Americans in prison today wouldn't be there if they had instead been ordered to treatment for their substance use or mental health problem," says Pamela Rodriguez, president of Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities (TASC), a statewide Illinois organization that advocates for alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders (NVOs). That figure doesn't count those detained in the state's county jails, many of whom are awaiting sentencing.

In Illinois, one out of four people incarcerated every year could have been diverted to substance use treatment instead, according to the TASC Center for Health and Justice. Of the 40,000 individuals admitted to the Illinois Department of Corrections, 20,000 are non-violent property or drug crime of fenders, and half of these meet the criteria for substance use or dependence. The costs of incarceration are $25,000 a year.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) estimated in 2000 that 20 percent of people in prisons and jails have a serious mental illness. One of the main reasons is deinstitutionalization--with nothing in the community to take the place of hospitals.

There were half a million people in psychiatric hospitals in this country in 1955, according to Judge Steven Leifman, associative administrative judge in Miami-Dade County and chair of the Task Force on Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues in the Courts for the Florida Supreme Court. Now, he says that just 40,000 psychiatric hospital beds are now available and instead, there are 550,000 people in prison and jails who have a mental illness.

Leifman is a nationally known proponent of treatment instead of incarceration for people with serious mental illness, and an eloquent spokesman for diversion away from the criminal justice system to treatment. He puts it plainly: "Most of these people aren't criminals."

Using incarceration as a substitute for treatment is not only …