Jennifer Parrish (Jails Action Coalition) on mental health diversion and community resource gaps

Good afternoon.

My name is Jennifer Parrish.

I'm a member of the Jails Action Coalition Treatment Not Jail Halt Solitary Campaign, and I work at the Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project.

Thank you for convening this hearing about the court delays that contribute to over-incarceration at Rikers.

People are suffering because of these delays, and no one's suffering more than people with mental health concerns.

In fact, we know that people with mental health concerns spend more time in jail than those who do not.

And we should all be ashamed that the New York City jail population overwhelmingly includes people with mental health treatment needs and those who've been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, and PTSD.

We are relegating them to a place that actually exacerbates

their mental health needs, and we're doing this mostly pretrial.

I joined my colleagues in encouraging the council and the mayor to encourage the state government to adopt the Treatment Court Expansion Act.

In New York City, it would speed the process for diversion by taking away the power from the prosecutors to be the gatekeepers and actually allowing a fair court system where they are arguing their position about diversion and not being the ones who control it.

But the mayor and the council have an important role in this process.

As Chief Judge Zayas said during his testimony, if we had more community resources to provide for diversion, we would be able to get people out much quicker.

And we know that there are people who are sitting on Rikers Island right now who qualify for assertive community treatment teams, intensive mobile treatment teams.

They are not assigned because the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will not assign them to a team because we simply do not have enough.

We should be funding these programs adequately.

We also know that they qualify for supportive housing and that people who are in jail are the least likely to be able to be placed in supportive housing.

And in fact, oftentimes people have a supportive housing application that's been approved.

CHS, Correctional Health Services, is required to do these applications for people with serious mental health concerns.

But oftentimes the public defenders don't even realize that.

So we need a level of coordination by the mayor's office to ensure that all the agencies are working.

working together to try to move people with serious mental illness off of Rikers Island.

Thank you.