Judge Milton Mack

And they have to discern if you're competent to stand trial or not.

If you're not competent to stand trial, they have to make you competent to stand trial so they can convict you.

Now, for misdemeanors, sending those individuals to the forensic center is an enormous waste of time, talent, money, resources, because at the end of the day, all you're going to get is a conviction for a misdemeanor.

for an individual who's going to re-offend.

So to be much smarter, so instead of sending this person to the forensic center, you send them into assisted outpatient treatment and drop the criminal charges.

Now, when we put together that legislation, we have the support of the Michigan Prosecutors Association, as well as the Defense Bar.

We had the support of the disability rights people.

So they all saw this is a better option because if we can take someone who's

mentally ill, committing misdemeanors, and get them well, then we're not going to have to deal with them again in the criminal justice system.

So let's see if we go upstream and take care of people before they get in trouble with the criminal justice system, then you're just going to significantly reduce the impact at that level.

It's been very enlightening.

It's been enlightening for stakeholders to find out how they are victims of a bad system.

So, for example, hospital emergency rooms are crying for the fact that their emergency rooms are crowded with people with mental illness.

And I point out, well, you know, if we take care of them properly, they won't be coming to your emergency rooms or law enforcement.

You know, one third of all the people in this country with a serious mental illness, their pathway to care was through law enforcement, which is kind of staggering.

So people in law enforcement are on the front line.

There's not a...

police officer around who won't tell you that dealing with people with behavioral health issues is a big part of their job.

If we can take care of that at the mental health treatment level, we help them out.

And we even help out community treatment because if you get people on there into treatment and into recovery, it puts less pressure on everybody all the way around.