MIAMI, Fla. – The Orange County Jail is often referred to as the largest mental health facility in Central Florida, where approximately 40% of the inmates are battling some kind of mental illness.
What if they did not go to jail and, instead, went to treatment?
That is precisely what is happening in Miami-Dade County, and Orange and Osceola County’s top prosecutor Andrew Bain is calling it a game changer.
He invited News 6 to join him for a personal tour of Miami’s newest facility for its program
Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery
“I’m going to take you into our receiving facility, which is amazing,” said Steven Leifman as he showed News 6 and Bain through a brand new facility called the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery.
Leifman is a judge for Miami-Dade County, and some call him a pioneer for changing the way police and the legal system treat people with mental illness who have committed crimes.
News 6 profiled the system he helped create in 2021.
Watch News 6′s profile of Judge Steven Leifman
“You know, I tell people, it’s not that they don’t want to take their medication by the time they get to us. They don’t care if they breathe by the time they get to us,” he said.
Leifman helped develop and implement a program in Miami-Dade called The Criminal Mental Health Project.
Law enforcement there is now trained to identify suspects who may have mental health issues, and those suspects are given an option: go to jail or go to mental health treatment.
The program, which is mostly paid for by Medicaid, has gotten results.
Over the last 10 years, Leifman said arrests have fallen 71%.
The number of people re-offending and getting arrested again is down from 75% to 20%.
“We see people walk right back out the door, and then we see them back again,” Bain said.
“Sometimes, they get arrested before they leave the courthouse,” Leifman said. “It’s ridiculous.”
Now, Miami-Dade has spent $51 million to renovate an old building into a new state-of-the-art mental health facility to help more than 9,000 patients each year avoid criminal charges and get help.
“It’s my biggest thing,” Bain said. “You got to treat people like a human first.”
“It’s not complicated,” Leifman said. “It’s all common sense.”
“You can solve so many issues after that,” Bain said.
Central Florida facility in the works
Bain said he wanted News 6 to join him on this tour in Miami because he wants to bring a facility just like it to Central Florida.
“This is amazing. It truly is,” he said. “It’s something that is needed in Orlando and Osceola County. We have a great group of people that are working on this project and desire this to happen and say yes to the project.”
Funding it is the largest obstacle.
We took that question to Rep. Tom Keen, who represents portions of Orange and Osceola counties in the state House.
“We don’t need to be incarcerating people who are mentally unhealthy, right? Yet, the jail systems are doing exactly that, and that doesn’t seem to be what we should be doing with our criminal justice system,” he said.
He said this is an issue he could get behind.
News 6 contacted other Central Florida legislators and found support for this facility on both sides of the aisle.
Republican Sen. Jason Broeder said, “As we continue to address the critical need for mental health and recovery services in our community, I would echo the frustrations made by State Attorney Bain on the funding initiatives to explore a similar treatment facility to that of Miami. I’d be happy to work with State Attorney Bain on exploring the unique needs of Central Florida and the potential for having a mental health treatment and recovery center.”
Democrat Rep. Anna Eskamani said, “We need to focus on intervention versus incarceration for non-violent offenses that involve mental health.”
Bain said he has a location in mind for a similar facility to be developed in the greater Orlando area, but he would not offer specifics.
He said he did not want to jinx it.
“Do you want to be arrested for a crime, or would you like to go voluntarily into this diversion program?” Bain asked.
He said he will be working to make that question an easy answer during the next legislative session.
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