Complete Justice (Ending the Criminalization of Mental Illness)

People with mental illnesses in the United States are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than hospitalized. In fact, seventy percent of individuals in jail in the United States have a serious mental illness, a substance use disorder, or both. After confronting the failures of our criminal justice system first-hand, Judge Steve Leifman realized that for the system to improve, a radical change was necessary. In 2000, he created Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Criminal Mental Health Project, later renamed to the Jail Diversion Project (JDP). Uniting all facets of the criminal justice system from courts to clinics, the program has become one of the most impactful models for prison reform across the country.

Complete Justice reveals Judge Leifman’s courageous and visionary efforts to successfully overhaul and restructure Miami-Dade’s mental health and criminal justice systems. The results have been nothing short of miraculous. Arrests were cut in half, the jail audit was reduced by almost half, police shootings almost stopped, and the county was able to close one of its three main jails at a savings of millions of dollars. Best of all, the results shown tin the book are replicable and scalable. Leifman has created a state-of-the-art, transferable model, the “Miami Model,” that is starting to be applied around the country in communities large and small. This highly successful initiative, consisting of both pre-arrest and post-arrest diversion programs, brings together the resources and services of law enforcement, the justice system, and community stakeholders to divert individuals with mental illnesses who commit low-level offenses away from incarceration and into community-based care. Complete Justice is the inside story of development, creation, and implementation of the Miami Model - and how it can save lives anywhere and everywhere else.

Starting with a trip to a psychiatric wing of a Florida jail at age 17, through his early missteps as a young judge bumping up against convoluted the mental health legislature, the formation of the JDP and monumental report on Florida’s mental health system, and finally spotlighting courts across the country adopting his program, Leifman’s inspiring work offers kindness, insight, and real solutions to one of America’s most complex social problems.