Passive offenders suffering from mental illness can be sidetracked from normal system of criminal justice for New Jersey and pushed into a therapy program developed to offer cure for their psychiatric illness. This comes under a program visualized by a longtime Democratic Senator that also reveals the objectives of an increasing national movement.
Sen. Shirley Turner claimed that she aims to roll out complete legislation in the upcoming week to generate a fresh initiative that will comprise particularly crisis-involvement training the law enforcement to lower the amount of mentally diseased people in custody. It will also generate a procedure to assist the court system identify perpetrators who will advantage from behavioral health services. It will also call for extra coordination among criminal justice executives and the mental health officials of the state. Law enforcement will have discretion in making a decision of who is suitable for diversion, she claimed.
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As per federal data issued by Turner, over 50% of the males (and almost 3/4th of the females) imprisoned in the U.S. are mentally diseased. Almost 1 in every 4 have been in custody 3 or more times. Some 17,000 youth and grown-ups in New Jersey are held in 13 institutions of the Department of Correction.
“Laws are made to defend society, and this one will do the same as far as I am concerned,” Turner claimed to the media in an interview. “If people are taken into custody with mental sickness, then it is logical that they come out with mental sickness too.”
On a similar note, as per Stepping Up Initiative, a countrywide campaign spearheaded by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, National Alliance on Mental Illness, American Psychiatric Foundation, National Association of Counties, and various behavioral health associations & law enforcement groups, 2 Million critically mentally sick people are taken in custody every year.
