Advocating for Help, Not Handcuffs Featuring Shannon Scully and Hannah Wesolowski

In honor of National Criminal Justice Month, “Hope Starts With Us” is guest hosted by NAMI’s Chief Advocacy Officer Hannah Wesolowski in conversation with NAMI’s Director of Criminal Justice Policy and Initiatives Shannon Scully. The two explore NAMI’s advocacy to end the criminalization of mental illness and creating avenues for help, not handcuffs. Through this episode, listeners will learn about our criminal justice policy priorities, the need for more support and resources, how to get involved in NAMI’s National Criminal Justice Month and Overlooked campaigns, plus the brand-new resource “Navigating the Criminal Justice System.” Listen now and learn how you can get involved today.

Episode links:

• National Criminal Justice Month
• NAMI's Overlooked campaign
• NAMI's new resource: "Navigating the Criminal Justice System"

You can find additional episodes of this NAMI podcast and others at nami.org/podcast.

"Hope Starts With Us" is a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It is hosted by NAMI CEO Daniel H. Gillison, Jr. 

Co-executive produced by Traci Coulter and Connor Larsen.

Transcript

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Amongst the general public, there's a lack of understanding about mental illness, especially about serious mental illness. And a lot of times what this leads to is just a belief that people with mental health conditions are violent. But the reality is, is that mental illness is not an indicator for violence, and it is definitely not an indicator for violent crime. We often kind of highlight the statistic that people are more likely to be a victim of a crime if they have a mental health condition, than they are perpetrate a crime. Welcome to Hope Starts With Us, a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I'm your guest host today, Hannah Wesolowski, Chief Advocacy Officer at NAMI. NAMI started this podcast because we believe that hope starts with us. Hope starts with us talking about mental health. Hope starts with us making information accessible. Hope starts with us providing resources and practical advice. Hope starts with us sharing our stories, and hope starts with us breaking the stigma. If you or a loved one is struggling with a mental health condition and have been looking for hope. We made this podcast for you. Hope starts with all of us. Hope is a collective. We hope that each episode, with each conversation brings you into that collective so you know you are not alone. Today I'm excited to talk about NAMI's work to end the criminalization of mental illness. March is National Criminal Justice Month, and this month, NAMI is promoting our overlook campaign to talk about the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system. Far too often, people with mental illness are caught up in our criminal justice system, and we want to make sure that we're supporting individuals and families to be diverted away from criminal justice system involvement and support all the individuals who are currently engaged in our justice system. I am so delighted to welcome our guest today. Shannon Scully is the Director of Justice Policy and Initiatives here at NAMI. Had the great fortune of working with Shannon for the last eight years, and she leads all of NAMI's work on addressing the criminalization of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system and all of the resources and support that we offer to our community. So welcome, Shannon. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm glad you're here because you do so much amazing work in this space and really want to start with, why are we talking about this in March? What is National Criminal Justice Month? Why does NAMI recognize this month? And, really, what is it all about? Yeah. So, National Criminal Justice Month was a month that was designated by Congress a number of years ago. But NAMI's engagement with this month really started only a few years back. So Congress's original intent was they were going to create this month to help people learn about what our criminal justice system does. And as we were, you know, Hannah, you were part of this conversation a few years ago. We were really looking at, how do we take our advocacy? How do we take our work around, kind of ending the criminalization of people with mental illness? How do we take that to the next level, and how do we really make sure that we're bringing as much attention to this intersection as we possibly can? And we identified National Criminal Justice Month, one being an education month, but two, a time where we could take advantage of it to not just educate people about the criminal justice system and what it does, but to educate people about the criminal justice system and what it doesn't do, being that it has a huge impact on people with mental illness, but does not, in fact, kind of overwhelmingly support kind of the goals that we at NAMI have for a lot of people living with mental health conditions, which is, to live their lives in a community, to be able to access support and services and to, you know, live really kind of fulfilling lives, surrounded kind of by their community that cares. And so, we really decided to flip National Criminal Justice Month a little bit on its head and use it more for our own purposes to really kind of highlight what the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system really means and what that reality means for millions of families. That's great. And I think we've gotten such a great response talking about this and giving people a space to share their stories and to talk about solutions and talk about opportunities to better support people. And instead of relying on the justice system to be our response. So let's talk about that intersection of criminal justice system and mental health. Why are people with mental illness so overrepresented in our criminal justice system? And why is this such a priority issue for NAMI? So I think we can start with the data. And I always kind of like to preference when I give out the data that we know about the criminal justice system, that, it's my belief and many of the advocates' that I work with around this country believe that this is an undercount. The data that we do have about the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system is an undercount, and that the impact, and the presence of people with mental illness who are in the criminal justice system is much-- the need is just much greater in that space. But the data that we do have is that about 2 million times each year, somebody with a mental health condition is booked into one of our nation's jails. About 44% of the people who are incarcerated in a jail have a mental health condition. And about somewhere around 35% of people who are incarcerated in state prisons or federal prisons have a mental health condition. And so these numbers really reflect almost, double what the rate of mental illness is in our general population. And so there's this overrepresented representation of mental illness that we're always talking about in the criminal justice system. And, it does beg the question why? And I think the easiest way to explain this is that when a system fails and this is not just the mental health system, but we talk about it in the context of mental health system. But when other systems we have fail, we use the criminal justice system as a safety net. So when someone cannot access services or there isn't the availability of services or engagement for them around their mental health condition in our community, their symptoms and their untreated symptoms get to a point in which, you know, they have fallen very clearly, fallen through the cracks. And what catches them, the safety net that we have chosen is the criminal justice system. And so, we see this across a number of things. You know, when someone's having a behavioral health crisis, law enforcement is the primary first responder for people who are seeking some kind of help during that crisis. When someone is homeless, again, we've seen an uptick in policies that criminalize sleeping on the streets. And living in homelessness. So again, we're choosing, kind of these mechanisms which aren't actually solving the problem, but does, in fact, you know, at least temporarily kind of address that immediate concern. And it does lead people to involvement, you know, not only temporarily, maybe a booking in jail, but can lead to further involvement within the criminal justice system. So sometimes there are charges, you know, they might be incarcerated for extended periods of time. But usually when we look at folks with mental health conditions who are incarcerated, who are involved in the criminal justice system, we can trace their story back to not being able to access services. And, you know, symptoms that are resulting from untreated mental health condition and that indirectly connects to their involvement in the justice system. Yeah, we're essentially criminalizing the symptoms that they have. Imagine if somebody else was in a health crisis, like having a heart attack and our response was, oh, jails the best place to bring them. That's the only place we have to give them help. Yeah. We also, you know, there's a lot of data out there. And this is a message that NAMI is constantly trying to push back on. But there is a, because of our, our you know, this has gotten better a lot in the last several years. But, you know, amongst the general public, there's a lack of understanding about mental illness, especially about serious mental illness. And a lot of times what this leads to is just a belief that people with mental health conditions are violent, which then I think logically stems from there, that of course, we would use the criminal justice system. But the reality is, is that mental illness is not an indicator for violence, and it is definitely not an indicator for violent crime. We often kind of highlight the statistic that people are more likely to be a victim of a crime if they have a mental health condition, than they are to perpetrate a crime. And so we do have a different way, and a lot of our work at NAMI, to kind of break down the stigma and understanding about mental illness is really also working towards this goal of trying to break down this fear that people have about it and an understanding that or a belief that someone might be dangerous as a result. And so, you know, I think that's another really important aspect of this conversation is just kind of that, misinformation that is out there that kind of really brings together mental illness and violence. It's such an important point. You know, so much of the narrative that we hear day in and day out really perpetuates this idea that people with mental illness are people to be feared. And we at NAMI, we know this isn't true. And, and so much of the work that you and I do is to try to educate partners, educate the public, to educate policymakers, about what this is. And that's where a lot of the stories that we collect that we're going to talk about a little bit later, come in. But before we get to that, can you talk about the policy work we do on reducing criminal justice system involvement? And really diverting people away from the justice system? What are some of the priorities that you have been fighting for the last eight years at NAMI, and that we prioritize? Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, the number one way that I think we think about diverting people and a mechanism that we use for diverting people from the criminal justice system is ensuring they don't even have that first encounter. And so, we've really focused a lot of our energy around helping communities rethink crisis response. So if someone's having symptoms and very severe symptoms, what is that response that we're giving them and ensuring that to the greatest extent possible, we're not giving them a law enforcement response. We're trying to minimize that law enforcement response. And when in law enforcement is dispatched that we are getting the skills, we're helping officers get the skills that they need to identify that what is happening in front of them, that they are responding to, is a mental health crisis. And what that person needs is to get crisis care and does not need to be incarcerated. So we've done this in a variety of ways. NAMI has been historically really involved in crisis intervention team programs, which is really kind of a law enforcement focused solution. It involves, a lot of collaboration on the local level to identify solutions that improve crisis response when it is a law enforcement response. And that is CIT.

That is CIT: 11:51

Crisis Intervention Teams. Yes, there are folks who may not be familiar. Yes. So for those who are not familiar or might just have heard the acronym Crisis Intervention Team programs is CIT. And really, you know, what we see and the great thing about these types of programs where it brings together collaboration is they usually go beyond just thinking about how law enforcement is responding, but they think about all the other tools that communities need in order to better address crisis response. And so that's where some of our other work has come in, where we do a lot of advocacy around the 988 hotline and ensuring that resources are allocated by the federal government and by state and local governments to ensure that anyone during crisis can dial 988 and be able to connect to a trained crisis counselor. Ensuring, you know, looking at the ways that we can expand and fund mobile crisis teams so that law enforcement doesn't need to go out to mental health crisis calls that we are sending immediately-- You know, we're sending mental health professionals who are trained to respond to crises and to provide people with the support and referral in the field. And then, we're also working really hard to ensure that we're providing alternatives to the emergency room, and to jails. So one of the spaces when someone doesn't have a place to go during a crisis, often where they land is either in a jail or in an emergency room or an emergency department in the community. And we're really advocating to bring crisis receiving centers, which are, you know, places where someone can go for about 23 hours. They look kind of like-- we advocate for them to look like a living room, but it's a space that's supposed to be comforting, that's supposed to be supportive, that can help someone continue to de-escalate from their crisis. And then get referred in to other services. So that's kind of the front end work that we really do. But then we also think, kind of on the other side on reentry and how we can support someone in coming back into the community. And one of our big asks around that is ensuring that Medicaid-- I'm going to get a little wonky here. I'm going to try to summarize this the best I can. But bottom line, when you become incarcerated, Medicaid can't cover any of your services while you are incarcerated. So it's almost like they take away your health insurance while you're incarcerated. And one of the things when you're returning to the community after a period of incarceration, there's a lot of things that's got to get turned back on so you can start building your life again outside the jail or prison cell and one of those things that can be really hard to get connected to again is Medicaid. And so, which is, you know, the primary, you know, source of coverage for mental health care for a lot of people and especially for people who are returning from incarceration. And so we really tried-- we've been really advocating around a piece of legislation called the Reentry Act and encouraging that Medicaid be reinstated 30 days before someone returns for community, so that the second they leave that that jail or prison door, they have access to that insurance, they can start making appointments in the community and getting connected to that mental health care. And then there's not kind of a separation of coverage. There's not any kind of delay in care for someone during this kind of very critical time of returning to the community from incarceration. Those are kind of our two main areas. Obviously, we do a variety of advocacy. Shout out to our affiliates who really do a lot of this work very deeply in their community. But there's a variety of other solutions that we work on. But these just happen to be the two that we're most focused on at the national office at this point. Yeah, I was going to say, don't sell yourself short. You talked about how do we help people before they even interact with law enforcement. But you do so much work at different points of diversion, whether it's sending people to mental health courts as an alternative, whether it's better care and custody, so that people are actually getting decent quality mental health services while they're incarcerated. There's so many aspects to this work, and it's so pivotal given as you said, with some of the statistics at the outset. There's such a high representation of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system. So there's lots of work being done at the National level, but also at the state and local level across the country. Yeah, absolutely. And one of those main things is, you really kind of, through our storytelling that our advocates do and our and our members kind of throughout the Alliance do. So I want to turn the microphone on you a little bit. As Hannah mentioned, we have been working together for eight years now. And, I like to say I have been working for Hannah. Hannah likes to say we have been working together, but she's been a really big part of our ability to do a lot of this advocacy work. And so I want you to talk a little bit about kind of our Overlooked Campaign that we launched a few years ago. I'll tell you what it is. I'll give everyone a little bit of a hint. It is a storytelling campaign I want you to talk about a little bit like, why do we storytell and why is, in a campaign like this, storytelling so pivotal? Yeah. You know, the Overlook Campaign has been really special because storytelling is so central to what we do. We are the organization of lived experience, and whether it's an individual's own journey or the journey from the perspective of a loved one, making sure people understand, policymakers, the public understand what those experiences are like, is what will change hearts and minds. You know, we always say facts inform, but it's stories that move policymakers to action. And so with Overlooked, it's really about this concept that people deserve help, not handcuffs. And we launched it to talk about real stories, to turn it on people's head of what is criminal justice system's involvement? What does a person who's been in jail or prison look like, act like? And hint, they have all kinds of different experiences. And that's what we really want to turn on its head that, you know, it's, it's anyone who, who has, just, you know, unfortunate opportunity to come in contact with the criminal justice system when they're in crisis, or their symptoms have worsened, that this could be anyone. And we really just want to normalize this experience and talk about it and get it out in the open. So, that we have greater public empathy, greater public understanding, and hopefully more policymaker action to really change how we operate and get people better care and get connected to care sooner. Yeah, definitely. And so do you want to share when we are running this Overlooked Campaign and how folks can get involved if they're interested to kind of take advantage of it? Yeah. So people can share their stories. People can advocate, if you go to nami.org/Overlooked, you can find all these resources. We're going to be adding stories of people's real experiences in the criminal justice system as a result of their mental illness throughout the month. We've been recording some amazing stories, and we're excited to get those out there, but we always want to collect more. Those stories are what powers our advocacy and getting those stories out really makes us much more impactful. So if you go to nami.org/Overlooked, you can find those resources. You can see some of our existing stories. You can take action. And we really do encourage people to get involved throughout the year. But this month is a good opportunity to kick start that engagement. And, and help us all dream and fight for a better future for everyone with a mental health condition. But that's not all we're doing this month. Overlooked is a big part of it. But, Shannon, you, have worked really hard with a lot of different stakeholders to develop a new resource, that I think is really going to support a lot of NAMI families and help them navigate these really difficult decisions and situations that they have to make when their loved one becomes involved with the criminal justice system. So can you talk about the new resource and why it's so important that we, as NAMI, are talking about these things and providing the support? Yeah, definitely. So this month we released a new resource called Navigating the Criminal Justice System, a guide or a resource for people with mental illness in their families. And this really-- this resource kind of really stemmed from, for those of you who are familiar with NAMI, one of the cornerstone supports that we offer in communities are both our programming, our support programming, as well as kind of our helpline supports. And I think one of the things that floated up a lot, kind of especially as something I observed in my time here at NAMI, is that there were a lot of questions from family about what do I do? How do I get my loved one help? Just this understanding that, or a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge, a lack of resources about what the criminal justice system is and what it can and should do for you. And so a lot of our NAMIs have, obviously our NAMI's are in the field, I'd like to say that they are the testing ground for things that we often do after they have, you know, tested it out and really perfected it kind of in the field. And then we bring it up to the national office. But a number of our NAMI's had created these guides that really helped families navigate the criminal justice system, have a better understanding of this system, and really feel empowered to engage with it, not only to advocate for themselves, but to advocate for their loved one. And so this guide is really intended for those families. It starts by helping families think critically about how a crisis can turn into criminal justice system involvement and really thinking through how preparing for a crisis can mean diversion. But also, you know, what happens when a crisis may involve a law enforcement officer and then really kind of leads you through this path of the criminal justice system all the way through re-entry. It's got a lot of really great resources in it. I'd say it's, for the most part, as best as we can. There's a lot of information, a lot of resources out there. We had to distill it down into the most compact resource we could, which was 65 pages long. Don't let that intimidate you. It's got a lot of links in it about where you can go, where you can find other information. It's got great tips, again, as I mentioned, about not only how to advocate for yourself, but how to advocate for your loved one, the best way to engage with the various entities that exist within the criminal justice system so that you know you can advocate for the best outcome, whether it's with a law enforcement officer, whether it's talking to, you know, whether someone's facing prosecution and it's talking to the judge, the prosecutor, or the defense attorney, whether it's talking to a jail or a sheriff or a warden about getting your loved one care. There's a lot of information and resources in there that's going to support that for families. And I think it really fills this gap that's out there, that thinks about a family member and thinks about the family as a whole as it relates to the criminal justice system. Often resources think about the individual, solutions think about the individual. This thinks about the whole family and the fact that someone who comes involved with the criminal justice system, especially if they have-- often, you know, if they have a mental illness, it's not just them, it's their family members as well. And so this really kind of puts a solid resource in the hands of those family members, where there hasn't been a lot of information or support in the past. And so, yes, we've been doing this through our support programs and through our helpline for decades, but this is now, we have the ability to kind of bring this to a wider audience. People who might not find this kind of information through our support programs or through our helpline. But now there's this, this resource online that they can access any time of day when they might be looking for information. So I'm really excited about it. You know, it's on NAMI's website. If you go to nam.org/NCJM for National Criminal Justice Month, you can access all of our National Criminal Justice Month resources, but also a place to download this guide. Yeah. And what I really like about this guide is that if you have a loved one that you're worried, you know, maybe, having increasing symptoms and kind of talks, what you should do to prepare or how you should-- when you call for help, how-- what you should say, if law enforcement arrives on the scene, what you should do. So it can really be a resource for families to prepare for a situation that they hope and God willing, they will never have to deal with, but to also know what to do in that situation. And then if that happens, yes. How do you get your loved one medication? What are your loved one's rights and what can you as a family do to help support them? There is a lot that talks in there about what the individual, what their rights are, as well as what a family can do to support and work with them and with their team. You know, their defense attorney or, with, you know, the prosecutor's office. There's so much rich information in there. And you said one word at the outset that really highlights it for me. It's so families can be empowered. Empowered with information, empowered with tools and resources. And while it can't cover every possible scenario, it's linked to so many additional resources that if a family is struggling and dealing with this situation, it really does kind of direct them to where they need to go. Because no one expects this, right? No one wants this, no one expects this. And so knowing where to start is so difficult. And so it's a great thing to just make sure folks have available. Again, God forbid you need it. But just to make sure that, you know, it's there, share it with others. And make sure you know what to do if you'd ever be in that situation. So again, that's at nami.org/NCJM for National Criminal Justice Month. A great resource and congratulations on that. I know that's been, a long project that you've really poured a lot into and got a lot of experts' feedback and families and folks with lived experience to make sure is the best resource it could be. So congratulations. Thank you. Absolutely. And again, encourage everyone to take advantage of it. Even if it's not, you know, for you, you never know who else in your community might be able to use it. So if you are an advocate in the community listening to this, please feel free to download it and we have sent it out to our affiliates, but share it widely. Share it with anyone you know who might be working in the criminal justice system, because you can also make sure that this gets into the hands of the people who need it just by making sure people are aware of it. Yeah. And I think it's a good resource to just for public defenders and defense attorneys and prosecutors, you know, anyone who's involved in these situations who may not understand all of the different considerations that an individual in the family is met with. If they're concerned about keeping their loved ones stable, getting them stable. I think it provides a lot of perspective for different folks that may be involved, not just families. So I do encourage people to check it out and better understand what's in there and share it widely. So that's a great resource that's new. We just launched that, what are other things that NAMI's providing to families who might have a loved one involved in the criminal justice system? Just in our last few minutes, can you speak to some of the other ways that NAMI, either at a national level or at the local level, is getting involved to support individuals and families? So NAMI does a variety of things, right? You know, we have this resource, but you will see, you know, if you download the resource and you read it, which I hope you do. You're going to see in a lot of places that we really encourage you to reach out to your local NAMI because, well, there's a lot of similarities about the criminal justice system across the country, the criminal justice system itself is incredibly localized. And our NAMIs are really involved locally trying to support families and advocate for changes locally. And so other ways that we're really able to support families, is often we-- well, we do we offer our NAMI support programming. A lot of the content, we're starting to build out and a lot of our NAMIs have built out, create space for families to talk about this experience, about what it's like being involved in the criminal justice system. You know, I would tell anyone who maybe came up to me and said, look, my loved ones in the criminal justice system, what can you do to help me? What are the resources I need? I would obviously give them information and resources to the best of my knowledge. But the other thing that I'm going to ask them is, where are you getting support? Are you getting support? It can be an incredibly stressful experience. And so having your own support so that you can continue to advocate on behalf of your loved one is incredibly important. And so many of our Family to Family support groups will cover information about the criminal justice system. NAMIs have adjusted content for their NAMI Connection programming or their NAMI peer to peer programming, which are our peer to peer support groups for people who have experiences in the criminal justice system, and to talk about that. And many of our NAMIs have even started to take it a step further, where they're bringing this information and these programs into jails and prisons to meet people where they're at, and to really start providing support to people while they're incarcerated, when there is such a high need for that kind of support and information. Whether they knew they had a mental health condition when they entered into the justice system, or whether they're just discovering it while they're incarcerated. It's life changing and transformative when I've talked to people who have experienced this, when I've talked to our leaders who are supporting this to make this happen in communities. It's transformative. So we do that. But then also, again, our affiliates are a wealth of information, and they have wonderful connections in the community. And so often are able to provide more hyper localized resources for folks, whether it's, you know, lawyers they know in the community who are specifically worked on mental health conditions or whether they know if there's a mental health court in your community or other diversion opportunities. That's the kind of information that we can't necessarily call out in a national guide. But our NAMIs have a list. They have that information. They have those resources locally and so, you know, hats off to our affiliates because they really are, you know, just a place of hope and resources for people who are really kind of going through this. Are NAMI leaders and volunteers, and the advocates on the ground do incredible work. And if anyone's listening that hasn't connected with their local NAMI, you can find them at nami.org/local. But they're the ones who are going to know what's available, who to talk to. You know how to get engaged, where you can go for support, all of the things because they've been on that road before. And that's really what NAMI is about, is helping people, by using your own experience and trying to make the path a little bit easier for the next person. So it's really just incredible, incredible work that's happening across the country. And, you know, we'll keep fighting for fewer families to need that support. But, NAMI is there while people do. So thank you, Shannon, for all of this. And before we wrap up, I'd like to ask you the question that everyone on this podcast gets asked. You know, the world can be a very difficult place. It can be hard to hold on to hope. So every episode we ask our guests really well helps you hold on to hope. What's giving you hope right now? Yeah, and I had to think about this a little bit and I'll preface my answer in saying that, you know, I think very rapidly over the last couple of years, we've kind of seen this increased messaging on the national level about the dangerous-- the dangerousness of people with mental illness, and that we need to use kind of these criminal-- we need to use the justice system to kind of like, address all these people with mental illness. I'm paraphrasing here some of what the messaging feels like a lot as we kind of consume news about mental illness. And I think what gives me hope is that, you know, NAMI for years has built relationships and met people where they're at, especially criminal justice professionals. And when I'm out in the community, when I'm talking to law enforcement leaders, when I'm talking to our NAMIs, when I'm talking to judges, what I hear from them is not, you know, a change in perspective on this that we tend to hear from the national level. But, we know what we need to do. We know that this is not the reality, and we're going to continue to hold hands to make sure that people are accessing care, and are getting the care that they need. And so I think what gives me hope in this time is that NAMI has built those relationships and that trust with the criminal justice system that I think locally, we're going to be able to continue to move forward, with solutions that give people access to care and that those relationships we built are really going to pay dividends and change people's lives. So I think that's what's giving me hope right now, especially around our work, our criminal justice work in this time. Yeah. I think that's so true. You know, NAMI advocates will keep making those relationships and keep building those bridges and communities, and that makes all the difference. Shannon, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. This has been Hope Starts With Us, a podcast by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. If you're looking for mental health resources, you are not alone. To connect with the bomb HelpLine and find local resources, visit nami.org/help. Text helpline to 62640 or dial one 800 950 NAMI that's 1 (800) 950-6264. If you're experiencing an immediate suicide, substance use, or mental health crisis, please call or text 988 to speak with a trained support specialist or visit 988lifeline.org. Again, that'll connect you to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. I'm Hannah Wesolowski, your guest host today. Thanks for listening. Be well.