A Quote by Ted Wheeler
The criminal justice system is not the right place - or it shouldn't be the place of first resort to provide addiction or mental health services. It should happen elsewhere with no police and no judges and no juries and no jails.
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The point of a mental health first aider is to be a champion for good mental health in the workplace, to provide a safe port-of-call for anyone wanting to talk about their mental health, and to offer signposting to available expert advice and professional services.
The right place for a person suffering a mental health crisis is a bed, not a police cell. And the right people to look after them are medically trained professionals, not police officers.
Mental health courts exist because the system has failed.
If these people were being treated,
they wouldn't end up with misdemeanor charges or
felony charges against them in the first place.
The very existence of mental health courts is really an
indication of the system's failure.
Ending up in the right place in this debate requires starting in the right place. The right place to start is the proper discrimination of what judges are supposed to do, and the rest of the process should reflect this judicial job description.
Mental health first aiders are not designed to replace mental health professionals, or to provide services on the cheap, any more than current first aiders replace paramedics or heart surgeons.
In order to really give mental health the focus and attention it deserves, we need to bring together and integrate all the services that provide women with the care they need. This includes the mental and physical health services, as well as social care.
It is apparent, if you go back through our history, that the grand juries of the criminal justice system do not value black lives.
It is hard to stay patient about policy matters where everybody agrees about what needs to be done and then it just doesn't happen, like reforming the immigration system and getting rid of family immigration jails and closing Guantanamo and criminal-justice reform. All these issues, there is basically consensus. There's no rational objections whatsoever, but it can't happen because of other stupid steps we have to take in politics.
I support defunding the police - particularly the militarization of our police force and reallocating those resources toward public health. And not just health care but mental health support, affordable housing, education, alternatives to incarceration, non-emergency responses to those who might be in mental distress.
I don't want to live in a society where we ask sporting leagues or place of employment to dole out harsher punishment than what the criminal justice system would.
I think one of the big problems we have got - and police tell me this - is most police don't know how to deal with mental health problems. And so we need better mental health response.
Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African American kids are unemployed. It is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.
We should have never let ISIS happen in the first place. And right now, they're in 32 countries.
I was very clear that we'd invest much more in shelter space to get people off the streets, out of doorways, out from overpasses and get them connected with services - whatever services they need, whether it's mental health whether its addiction or economic resources.
A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it. That includes health information. And mental health information. It's a community space. It's a place of safety, a haven from the world.
We have this long history of racism in this country, and as it happens, the criminal justice system has been perhaps the most prominent instrument for administering racism. But the racism doesn't actually come from the criminal justice system.
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